12 Tips For Controlling App Tabs On Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some tips for using Tabs in apps where you work with documents.

So when you want to work with multiple documents in an app you have two choices. One is to open up each document in its own window. But you can also choose to work with Tabs instead, having multiple documents open in one window each in its own Tab.

For instance here I am in Pages. I actually have two documents open but only one window. I've got one tab here with this document and another tab with this document. It looks similar to how tabs work in browsers. So here in Safari I also have two tabs open in this one window. This one and this one. There is a fundamental difference though between apps where you're viewing content and apps where you have a document you're working on. In a browser where you're viewing content you can goto File, and choose New Window, or New Tab. You can do this because it's okay to start a new tab or window blank. In this case it is showing you the start page. The same thing works in Mail. You're viewing content here in Mail. So you can go to File and open up a New Viewer Window. But hold down the Shift Key and you can see that changes to a New Viewer Tab. You can have a second tab open in Mail here and be viewing different content in each one.

So in a browser it is easy to open a new tab. But it is not so easy to open it in a document window like this because if you go to File, New it will allow you to create a new document but it is going to put it in a New window. If you want it to be in a New Tab you have a few options. The first is to go into System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock. Scroll down until you get to Windows and look for Prefer Tabs When Opening Documents. By default it is set to Full Screen. So when you're using the window full screen creating a New Document will create a New Tab. But you can also set it to Always. If you do that and then go back to Pages and do exactly what I did before creating a new document you can see it creates it in a New Tab in the current window. 

There's also another way you can do it that works even if you have the System Setting the other way. That's to use the Plus button here to the right of your current tab. If you use that it will create a New Document in a tab in this window.

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Let's say you have this switched Off or just in full screen. Now if you just have one single document open in this window in Pages there's no Plus button here and creating a new document like this will create it in a new window. How can you combine these into one window in two tabs? Well, the quickest way is go to Window and choose Merge All Windows right here. If you do that it merges all of the currently open windows and all the tabs in them into one single window. So now I've got these both here. Now I've got this Plus button here for the next time I create a new document.

But there's another way to do it. You can go to View and then select Show Tab Bar. This will force the tab bar on even though there's only one tab. Here you've got the Plus button to create your next document.

Now whether you use Show Tab Bar or you just simply have more than one tab open you've got these tabs here and you can drag them around to reorder them like this. You can also use them to move tabs between windows. So I'll create a New Pages document here and you can see I've got a second Pages window here. I can drag this tab to this window by clicking and dragging here. It's a little tricky. It's not as easy of a drag as a lot of other things. You have to click and kind of hold and then drag away. Now you've got this window here. I want to move to this window and let it come to the front first so it is selected. Then drop it in here into where the tab bar would be or the tab bar if it is there. So I can move tabs between windows that way. I can also click and drag and simply drag it out and it will drag it to its own new window. So if I want to merge two specific windows into a tab I can do that by dragging the tab at the top. If it is not there, like this, I can go to View, Show Tab Bar. So now I can click and drag and I have to do from the Tab, not from the Title Bar or any other part of the window, but from this Tab label here. Click and drag and I can drag it into another window to add the tab to that window.

Now you can also do something by using the Context Menu. So you Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad, or right click on a mouse, on a Tab. Again if you don't see the tabs here but there is just one tab you can go to View and Show Tab Bar there. If I use the Context Menu you can see I have the ability here to move the tab to a new window. Also, notice you can close tab which is the same thing as clicking this little x here. But you can also close all the other tabs just to keep this one open.

So at this point we should talk about the difference between closing a tab and closing a window. I have two tabs open here. If I go to File and then Close Window it will close that window with both those tabs. I can also choose Close Tab. Notice Command W will shift between these two. If you have a window that just has one tab you'll only see Close Window and Command W for that. If you have multiple tabs then the Command W drops down to Close Tab here. So in other words it is only closing the current document no matter how many tabs you have open. You can hold the Option Key down and this will change to Close Other Tabs. Note that the x button here at the top left corner, that closes the window. So it would close all of these tabs. But each tab has its own little x button to just close that tab.

You also have the ability under Window here to Move Tab to A New Window. So the current tab will go to a new window. Then notice here you've got Keyboard shortcuts for Show Previous Tab, Show Next Tab. So basically Control and Tab instead of Command and Tab for the App Switcher. Then Shift added to that goes in the opposite direction. So I can switch between these two tabs with Control and Tab like that.

But there's also another command you should know about called Show All Tabs. If you go to View you'll see Show All Tabs there. You can also get to it by Control clicking on any Tab and it will appear here. You do that and you get this view, which gives you an overview of all the tabs. So you can see each one and you get a Plus button as well. So now I can just simply switch to this tab like that. If I only have one tab open and Hide Tab Bar is turned on so I can't add a new tab I can go to View, Show All Tabs and then use the Plus Button there to add a new tab.

So here I am in Numbers and I've got a window with a single tab open here and then this window with multiple tabs. If you go to the Window Menu you actually get a list at the bottom here of all of the current documents open. It doesn't care whether they are in Tabs of individual windows. So, you can switch to a document this way and it will bring that window to the front. You can also go and switch to a document that's part of a window with multiple tabs and it will switch to that window and take you to that tab.

You can also do that by clicking and holding on the App Icon in the Dock. Then here you'll see a list of all of the open documents. So if I were to select one that's a tab in a window it will go to that window and then go to the tab in that window. So you have two ways to get to the document that's open regardless of whether it's in a tab or in it's own window.

Another great place to work with tabs is in the Finder. You can have multiple Finder tabs open in a single window. So here, for instance, in the Finder I've got a single Finder view open but I can create a New Finder Window or a New Tab. So it kind of works like a Content Viewer, like Safari or Mail. So when I create a New Tab I've got two tabs open like that. Each one can be looking at something different. It works great with Drag & Drop. I can be in this tab, start dragging and drag over to a tab, wait and it will activate that tab and I can then drop it here or just continue to navigate by going down into subfolders, like that. In the View Menu you've got your Show & Hide Tab Bar. You've got Show All Tabs. You can see their keyboard shortcuts for it. Keyboard shortcuts kind of vary from App to App for those although the menu items are the same. You can also go to View, Show Tab Bar and you'll get the Plus Button here to open up a new Tab. If you have multiple Finder windows open you can go to Window and choose Merge All Windows just like with Pages or Numbers.

So Tabs are a great alternative to working with multiple documents in an app without having multiple windows open. Thanks for watching.