Mac Basics: Using Windows And Tabs

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at using Windows and Tabs on your Mac.

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So when you're using apps on your Mac those apps have windows. The windows display various things depending upon the type of app. For instance here in Pages this window contains a document. In Safari the window contains a webpage. In the Finder here you have a view of what's in your hard drive. In this case a view of the Documents folder. 

Now you may be most familiar with using Tabs in the web browser. After all tabs started in web browsers long before they were available in other apps. So here I have, in Safari, three different windows open showing three different webpages. As you can see it gets kind of messy and in most cases you're really only looking at one webpage at a time. So instead of having these in three different windows you can have them in one window but in three separate tabs. In this case the easiest way to combine these tabs is to go to Window and then Merge All Windows. That puts all of the windows into one, the front-most one. You can see them all as separate tabs at the top. So I have this, page, this page, and this page. I can go between them all just clicking on the tab at the top. 

Now if I wanted to create a new window in Safari or any browser I could go to File, New Window or Command N. But I could also use New Tab or Command T to create a new tab. You can see it created a new tab here. Depending upon your settings it will display your Homepage or the Start Screen or in my case just a blank page and I can go to a new website. If I want to Close a tab I just move my mouse over it and there's an X button there and I can close it. I could also rearrange these tabs by dragging them left or right. Put them wherever I want. There's other functionality as well. If you look at Window you could see I've got Arrange Tabs By, I have a way to go to Previous or Next Tab and you can see there are keyboard shortcuts for those. I could even Duplicate a tab or Move a Tab to a New Window. So I could take this current tab out and you could see this is now a separate window from the window that has the other two tabs. Then I could create a new tab in this one. I'll use the keyboard shortcut. I could drag tabs between windows. So I can grab this tab here and you could see I could drag it into this window. 

You can see I can't do that if I only have one tab because there's no tab heading at the top. But I could make a tab heading by going to View, and then there's the option for Show Tab Bar which will show the Tab Bar even if there's just one tab. Now I can drag this tab to this window as well effectively merging both windows. 

Now while most Mac users know that you can use tabs in browsers a lot of Mac users don't take advantage of tabs in the other apps. For years now tabs have been available in almost all the apps that you would use. For instance here in Pages I have two windows open with two separate documents. But I could go to Window, Merge All Windows, and now it puts those two documents into one window in separate tabs. I can use it in the same way I would use tabs in Safari. I could drag them around. I could use the same shortcuts to go to Previous Tab, Next Tab. Now if I go to create a New Document, like this, it will create the new document in another tab since I've already got a window open with two tabs. I can also use this Plus button here to add a new tab. 

The same is true in the Finder. As a matter of fact you rarely need to have more than one Finder window open because you can have tabs and move between locations by going to different tabs. You can even drag and drop files between tabs. So I could move this file, for instance, by just going over the tab, waiting for it to open, and then dropping this file in there. If you Control click, or two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse, you could open up a folder in a new tab instead of diving down into that folder in the same tab. Also tabs are great when you want to work in Full Screen Mode. Full Screen Mode here in Pages I get the tabs here but in just one Desktop. So I have my normal Desktop here and here's Full Screen Pages. I have three tabs open here. I could easily move between them and have all my Pages documents in one Full Screen Desktop.

There's one System Preference you should know about. In System Preferences, General there's Prefer Tabs. This determines what happens when you want to create or open a document. You can Prefer Tabs in Full Screen Mode whether you're in Full Screen Mode or in Windows Mode or Never Prefer Tabs, always open up a new window. If you ever forger what options you've got with Tabs you can always use the Context Menu. So Control clicking, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad on a tab and you get the Options here. 

Now how you use Windows and Tabs is up to you. It's a personal preference. Some people may prefer to have every document or every webpage in a separate window. Some people may prefer to only ever have one window open per app and have tabs for multiple documents or multiple views inside of that one window. You may want to take it on a case by case basis. So sometimes have one window with multiple tabs and then occasionally open up a second window with just one document or view in that. It's easy to switch back and forth, merge them and detach a tab from a window. So you can decide on the fly and change your mind as often as you want whether or not to open something up in a new window or a new tab as it is easy to go back and forth.