10 Tips For Using Window Tabs On Your Mac

Tabs are a useful alternative to using multiple Windows in just about any app or situation on your Mac. Here are some tips to get the most from using tabs in apps like Safari, Pages and even the Finder.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you some tips for using Tabs in Safari and other apps on your Mac. 
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So one of the fundamental skills you need to master on your Mac is the use of Tabs. That's having multiple windows inside of a single window. This started many years ago in browsers and you can certainly do it in Safari where you'll find the most tabs features. But you can also use tabs in other apps as well. 
Here I am in Safari and to create a new Tab there is several different ways I can do it. One is I can go to File and then choose New Tab. The keyboard shortcut for this is almost always Command T no matter which app you're in. In Safari you also have Plus button here on the right. You can click that to create a new tab. You can also create a new tab when you click on a link. Now how you do that exactly depends on your settings. In Safari Preferences, if I go there and I look under Tabs I could see here a variety of different options. I have it set to Command Click opens a link in a new tab. But you can set it many different ways. 
So if I click on this link here it will just go to that link in this tab. But if I Command Click on it you can see it opens up a new tab and now I have two tabs here. In other apps like the Finder you don't have all those options. But you can still go to File, New Tab and it's the same Command T there to open up a new tab. Now you can see I have two tabs open. In this case they are both looking at the Documents folder. But if I navigate to Project A in this folder you can see I've got the Documents folder in this tab and Project A in this tab.
Now in Pages it's a little different. There is no File, New Tab. I can choose New for a new document and that will create a new document in a window. But I will show you in a minute how to just go and create a new tab in Pages.
Now we don't have a second tab. I'll close this one here. You can see I don't see the Tab Bar. It only appears when I use Command T or create a new tab some other way. But you can set it to always be there by going to View and then look for Show Tab Bar. When you have that on it will appear even if there is just one tab. In Finder here it's called something a little different. It's still under the View Menu. Now it's called Show Tab Bar and now you can see it comes up even though there just one tab and here I get a nice little Plus button that I can use to create a new tab.
This is how you can easily create a new tab in Pages because here if you go to View and Show Tab Bar, notice it's in a different location in the View Menu here. Then I get the tab bar here even though there's only document open and I have a handy Plus button. I can now click that and create a new document and it will create it in a new tab.
Another option in the View Menu is to Show All Tabs. In Safari it appears as Show Tab Overview. Then you get a visual representation of every tab and you can easily switch one by clicking on it. Click the X button on any one to close it. Click the big New Tab button to create a new tab. In the Finder it's called View and then Show All Tabs. You can do the same thing here. It's even available in Pages. Go to View, Show All Tabs and you'll get the summary here with a New Tab Button.
Now there are many different ways to switch tabs. One, of course, is to simply click on the tab at the top. But you could also use some keyboard shortcuts. Go to Window and you'll see those. You have Show Next Tab or Control and then the Tab key. Show Previous Tab which is Control Shift and the Tab key. So I could use those to move between the tabs. This also works in other apps but in Safari, in addition to that, you can also use Command and a number key to jump to a tab. So Command 1 jumps to the first tab, Command 2 to the second. Command 9 always jumps to the last tab.
Now in all apps you can rearrange tabs by simply clicking and dragging them. So you can change the order at which the tabs appear. Safari has an extra option where you can go to Window and then Arrange Tabs By. You can have them sorted by Title, or you can have them sorted by the website address. 
You can easily take a tab out of a window. Let me shrink this window a bit here and I can grab this tab. If I drag it out of the window I now have a new window with that tab. You can also use this to move tabs between windows. So now I have two windows here. I can take this tab, and move it into this window here. I could also merge all of the windows into one window with Tabs by going to Window, and then Merge all Windows. Now it puts them all together here in this one window.
Since Safari was the first Mac App to get Tabs it still has some more advanced functionality not available on other apps. One of the things it can do is it can duplicate a current tab. So I could be at this page here and before I dig down into a subtopic I could go to Window and then Duplicate Tab. Now I have two versions of it. So I can leave this one here at this location. But here I can go and dig down into the site. You can do the same thing by using a shortcut to open a link in a new tab. So here I can do Command Click and now I still am at this page here. But over here I'm at the new location. Notice that when I did that it opened up a new tab but it didn't take me to it. That is another thing you can set in Safari Preferences Tabs. Here I have When a New Tab or Window Opens make it Active not checked. 
Now another unique tab function in Safari is to Pin Tabs. So you can Pin Tabs in one of many ways. You can go to Window and then Pin Tab. Then it Pins it here on the left. So it shrinks it down to icon size and puts it here on the left. You could also do that by dragging a tab over to the left and it pins it there. Pin Tabs behave a little bit differently. First of all they are available on all Safari windows. So if I had a second Safari window open I would see these new pinned tabs displayed there as well. When you go to a pinned tab and you close it using File, Close Tab or Command W it still leaves it there. It acts as if it is closed. So I go to another tab here. But the pinned tab is still present. Also you'll stay here on this pinned tab as long as you click on a link that takes you into the same website. But if I go to another website, for instance let me click down here to a link that goes elsewhere, it will open that up in a new tab. The pinned tab stays at that site.
You can unpin a tab by dragging it out to the right and then easily close it.
Now here are a couple of bonus tips. One is that most of these functions you can get by Control clicking or using whatever your secondary click is. Two fingers on the trackpad. Right clicking on a mouse. Just do that on a tab and you get a lot of these commands here. So in Safari I have the ability to Pin a Tab, Duplicate a Tab, Close it, Move it to a New Window, or even do those arrangement functions. So this works in other apps as well. So I can Control Click here, I have Close Tab, Close Other Tabs, Move Tab to a New Window, or Show All Tabs. So I don't necessarily have to go to View Menu and the Window Menu to access those.
Here's another tip. Go to System Preferences and then go to Dock. There's one setting here for Tabs. That is Prefer tabs when opening documents. By default this is set to Full Screen Only. So when you're in full screen mode for an app if you go to open a new window it opens a new tab and keeps you in that full screen desktop. You can turn that off completely by going to Manually. But you can also turn on Always. Now when you're in and out, like the Finder or Pages or whatever, and you go to create a new Finder window instead it creates a new tab. If you like using Tabs turn this On. It takes a little getting used to even if you're like Tabs but once you get used to it you'll find you have a lot less clutter because you're not always creating new windows.
So I hope you found these tips for using Tabs on your Mac useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 4 Responses to “10 Tips For Using Window Tabs On Your Mac”

Gene

4 years ago

Another great video. Thanks

Steve

About the last few minutes of the video, where Tabs in Finder are mentioned, Prefer Tabs setup being in Sys Pref, General, not Dock when using Big Sur. When I set Prefer Tabs to Always, the Finder doesn't add a tab when I click on another folder in the sidebar. Am I doing something wrong or has Big Sur changed things?

Gary Rosenzweig

Steve: That's working as it should. The sidebar changes the location of your current Finder tab, it doesn't open a new one. You can Control+click and select Open in New Tab if you want.

Thanks, Gary. I do a lot of Ctrl-clicking to get new tabs, was hoping (thought I saw in the video) I could do away with the Ctrl key as I click on Folders in Finder. Can't do. O well. Keep up the good work!

Comments Closed.

10 Tips For Using Window Tabs On Your Mac

Comments: 4 Responses to “10 Tips For Using Window Tabs On Your Mac”

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