Tabs are one of the best innovations since web browsers were first developed. Where once most of us would have multiple windows open or have to rely on the back button or History menu to find our way to websites we’d recently visited, the ability to have multiple tabs open in the same window allows us to keep our desktops tidy while retaining easy access to websites we want to revisit. Tabs have more to offer than you might realize in whichever browser you use them, and in this article, we’ll show you how to duplicate a tab on Mac.

Why duplicate a tab?

There are a few reasons why you might want to duplicate a tab:

  • If you’re viewing a long web page, you might want to keep the top part visible in one tab while viewing the bottom in another tab.
  • Because creating a duplicate tab puts the new tab right next to the original, it’s a useful way of keeping tabs together in a browser window, especially if you have dozens of tabs open at the same time.

How to duplicate a tab on your Mac

The process for duplicating a tab is slightly different for each browser. Here are instructions for different browsers. But first, let’s answer a popular question: is there a duplicate tab shortcut? Unfortunately, no, so follow the steps below for your browser.

Safari

There are two different ways to duplicate a tab in Safari:

  • Right-click or Control-click on the tab and choose Duplicate Tab.
  • Click the tab so that it is selected, then click the Window menu and choose ‘Duplicate tab’.

Chrome

Like in Safari, there are two ways to duplicate tabs in Chrome:

  • Right-click or Control-click the tab you want to duplicate and choose Duplicate.
  • Click the Tab menu and choose ‘Duplicate tab’.

Firefox

In Firefox, there’s only one way to duplicate a tab: right-click or Control-click it and choose ‘Duplicate tab’.

Opera

In Opera, as in Firefox, the only way to duplicate a tab is to right-click or Control-click on it and choose ‘Duplicate tab’.

Edge

In Edge, to duplicate a tab you can right-click or Control-click it and choose ‘Duplicate tab’. Or you can click the Tab menu and choose Duplicate.

How to stop web browsers from slowing your Mac down

Web browsers are one of the main culprits when it comes to slowing your Mac down. One of the reasons for that is that many of us have dozens of tabs open at the same time, each of which refreshes in the background, eating up CPU cycles and RAM. However, that’s not the only reason. Web browsers store lots of files on your Mac — from cache to cookies and other data — that occupy space on your startup disk. These files can cause conflicts and slow the web browser down or cause it to misbehave. Then, there’s your downloads folder and all the stuff in there that you never delete. And if you don’t update a browser regularly it can be a security risk or become unstable.

Taking care of all of that manually is difficult and demands a lot of time. So, what can you do? We suggest CleanMyMac’s Smart Care tool. It scans your Mac looking for junk files, clutter, duplicate files, malware, applications that have updates available, and opportunities to optimize performance — all with one click. When it’s finished, you can choose to follow its recommendations or review what it has found and decide what to do from there. Get your free CleanMyMac trial and follow these steps:

  1. Open CleanMyMac.
  2. Click Smart Care > Scan > Run.

What else can you do with tabs?

That depends on the browser you’re using. Here are just a few things:

  • In most browsers, you can change the order in which tabs appear by clicking on one and dragging it to the position in the tab bar where you want it to appear.
  • In many browsers, you can reopen closed tabs by clicking on the History menu and looking for an option that says ‘Reopen last closed tab’ or ‘Recently closed’. In Chrome, there’s a Recently Closed section in the History menu that groups tabs by session. If you choose a group of tabs, you can reopen them all at once. In Edge, click History > Manage History, and you’ll see a window open at the right of the screen. Choose Recently Closed at the top of that window to see and open recently closed tabs. If you close a tab and then immediately realize you’ve made a mistake, you can press Command-Z to reopen it.
  • Most browsers also allow you to pin and mute tabs. Pinning a tab shrinks the space it occupies in the tab bar and moves it to the left of the bar. It can’t be closed by clicking an ‘s’ as other tabs can. It’s designed to sit there permanently. To close it, you must either Control-click on it and choose Close or unpin it and then close it. Muting a tab prevents it from playing sound and muted tabs are often denoted by a loudspeaker with a line through it.
  • In Edge, you can have tabs appear down the left side of the window, arranged vertically instead of horizontally along the top of the window.
  • In Safari, tabs can be grouped and you can open and close groups of tabs together — useful if you want to create a group of tabs for, say, work and a group for personal use.

If you use tabs on a web browser, you will know how convenient they can be and how they can make life easier when you want to keep track of multiple web pages. However, you may not know about all the things you can do with tabs. Follow the steps above to duplicate a tab on your Mac and find out what else you can do with browser tabs.