Tabbed browsing

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Tabbed browsing lets you open several web pages within a single Firefox window, each displaying in its own tab.

Table Of Contents

Creating and Loading Tabs

To open a new tab, press CtrlCmd+T, select File > New Tab, or double-click an empty space in the Tab Bar.

To load a link in a tab, you can do one of the following:

  • Middle-click the link. (If you have a mouse wheel, clicking the wheel is equivalent to middle-clicking.)
  • Drag the link and drop it on an empty space in the Tab Bar. (If only one web page is open, the Tab Bar may be hidden. See Customizing Tabbed Browsing for information on how to change this.)
  • Drag and drop the link onto a tab to open the link in that tab.
  • Right-clickPress Ctrl, click on the link, and choose Open Link in New Tab from the context menu.

To open a URL in the Location Bar in a new tab, enter the URL and press AltOpt+EnterReturn.

Moving Tabs Within a Window

Tabs are displayed in the order you open them, which may not always be what you want. To move a tab to a different location within a Firefox window, simply drag it there using your mouse. While you are dragging the tab, Firefox displays a small indicator to show where the tab will be moved. Alternately, you can use keyboard shortcuts to move tabs within a window if desired.

Closing and Restoring Tabs

To close the current tab, press CtrlCmd+W, click the Close Tab button, middle-click the tab, or select File > Close Tab. To close all tabs other than the current one, right-clickpress Ctrl, click on the tab and choose Close Other Tabs.

Firefox windows keep a list of tabs you closed recently. You can restore any tab by selecting it from History > Recently Closed Tabs. You can restore all tabs by selecting History > Recently Closed Tabs > Open All in Tabs . Press CtrlCmd+Shift+T to open them one by one in reverse order.

Customizing Tabbed Browsing

To change tabbed browsing optionspreferences select Tools > OptionsEdit > PreferencesFirefox > Preferences and open the Tabs panel.

Tips and Tricks


Bookmarks and Tabbed Browsing: To bookmark a set of tabs:

  1. Press CtrlCmd+Shift+D or selectSelect Bookmarks > Bookmark All Tabs to add all the tabs in the current window to a new bookmark folder.
  2. To open bookmarks in tabs, open a bookmark folder menu and choose Open in Tabs. You can also middle-click on the folder to open its contents in tabs. The bookmarks will open in existing tabs, not new ones.


Home Page as Tabs: Instead of using only one web page as your homepage, you can make a set of tabs your home page. Select your favorite web sites and open them in tabs in a single window. Select Tools > OptionsEdit > Preferences Firefox > Preferences and open the Main panel. Under Startup, press the Use Current Pages button. Now when you press the Home button, your favorite web sites will load with just a click.

Adding a New Tab Toolbar Button: You can add a New Tab button on the toolbar to easily open new tabs by customizing your toolbars.


Keyboard shortcuts: Firefox has an extensive set of shortcuts related to tabbed browsing; see the full list in Keyboard Shortcuts.


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Page last modified on Friday 11 of April, 2008 05:56:18 PST.
Contributors to this page: Chris_Ilias , djstsys and mozilla_help_viewer_project .
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