The best Firefox shortcut ever – scroll through tabs with ease!
I love Firefox, and it is my browser of choice without a doubt. But there is one thing that annoys me whenever I’m using it – the fact that I can’t use a shortcut to easily move between tabs, i.e. there’s no alt-tab type of shortcut like there is for moving between open windows. I’ve searched for such a solution, and never found one, and since I often have tens of tabs open, it can get pretty hard to move between them.
I also love my baby (bear with me), but tend to find working with her on my lap a bit of a challenge. She likes to eat my mouse (there’s no accounting for taste), and bang on the keyboard as I work, which pretty much makes getting anything done impossible.
Firefox-baby? Ma hakesher, as we say in Hebrew (what is the connection)? Well, today my darling baby was banging away as usual, and suddenly I realized that if I press the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. on my keyboard it takes me to open tab #1, then tab #2, etc.! I peeled my baby off the keyboard (waaah waaahh!) and tried to reenact whatever it was that she had done, and finally figured it out:
If you press ctrl+a number, it takes you to that number tab!
So, if you want to jump to tab #4, press ctrl+4!
Maybe this is something Firefox users already knew, but nobody ever told me about it so maybe there are others out there who could use this info too! Hurray for my baby! Baby, you can eat my mouse any time.
Category: Tips
“there?s no alt-tab type of shortcut”
Try ctrl-tab instead. Does the same as alt-tab but with tabs.
Ryan, you’re a genius!! I never knew about that shortcut. This is very (geekily) exciting.
and to go the other way around: ctrl+shift+tab
Wow, thanks Miriam, Ryan and Hannit. I was looking for this shortcut myself, and finally thanks to you all I’ve got it.
[...] i need at least two windows running permanently as a bare minimum in a day. Imagine my delight when i found out there actually was a shortcut to jump in between [...]
glad I bookmarked this
http://lesliefranke.com/files/reference/firefoxcheatsheet.html
Anna and Tips and Tabs – I’m glad I’m not the only one out there who didn’t know about these shortcuts!
Another tip on that, Ctrl + F4 will close the current tab
You are all geniuses. This is the best thing I’ve read all day.
@Jake – are you being sarcastic? Maybe we’re all nerds, but a lot of us were pretty thrilled to discover these shortcuts. Nice blog, by the way.
Here are some more for you.
CTRL + T: opens a new tab
CTRL + W: closes current tab
CTRL + TAB: opens next tab
CTRL + SHIFT + TAB: opens previous tab
CTRL + 1: opens 1st tab; CTRL + 2: opens 2nd tab; etc.
CTRL + ENTER (RETURN): Adds “http://www.” and “.com” to anything in the address bar. (i.e. type “google” and then CTRL + ENTER)
SHIFT + ENTER (RETURN): Adds “http://www.” and “.net” to anything in the address bar.
CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER (RETURN): Adds “http://www.” and “.org” to anything in the address bar.
excellent tips; Thank you!!!!
Hey Ryan – thanks for the other Firefox shortcuts. So handy!
[...] after moveing from Safari which use Cmd+Shift+Left or Right Arrow/[,] all until I stumbled across this post on WordPressGarage which stated that Ctrl+the number of the tab, ie, Ctrl+2 for the second tab [...]
Is there one that allows us to jump to that search box in the top right corner??
Thanks!
Yes, Ctrl + k
Thanks!
Ah perfect! I’m tired of opening up multiple windows so I can use Alt+tab. Thank you for this wonderful post!
Thank You ! Thank you, thank you!!!
i hit my own record with 62 open tabs a few days ago, and now i see this!!! this is the best digital gift ever! one step closer to the internet…. cheers!
You guys ROCK!! This is what I have been looking for with no success. Ryan, thanks for the tips.
@Doc Thanks for saying we rock! We live off of positive feedback, so it means a lot.
the more modern, “cool” expression in Hebrew is actually “What Kesher”