If you surf the internet a lot, you know how useful tabs can be in your browser. In this tip, we’ll show you how to use tabs on macOS in many Mac apps to be more productive with your screen space.
Tabs in macOS apps
Tabs are an easy way to keep your desktop organized. Web browsers in particular, such as Safari and Google Chrome, use tabs to prevent you from opening dozens of separate windows. But other apps on macOS Sierra or higher can also use tabs to keep an overview.
To open new documents in a tab instead of a new window by default, you have to set this up first. By default, new documents are opened in a separate window. To do this, follow the steps below.
- Click on the Apple icon at the top left and open ‘System Preferences;’
- Choose ‘Dock’, and set ‘Open documents in tabs’ to ‘Always’ or ‘Only in full screen view’.
If you then open a new document in an app that is already open, the file will open in a new tab. This is especially useful in apps where you often use multiple documents at the same time, such as Pages or Numbers.
This also works for non-Apple apps, such as the Pixelmator photo editing program. Many apps have support for tabs since the Sierra update, even without the developer of the app having to do anything about it. Some programs have their own version of tabs: in that case the macOS way doesn’t work, but you have to use the shortcut keys of the program itself.
You can also open a new tab with the shortcut ⌘T (Command-T). In some apps, such as Pages, this shortcut opens the formatting screen. To open a new tab here, first open the tab bar with Shift-Command-T, after which you press the plus sign in the top right to open a new tab. The Control-Tab shortcut also works in tabbed apps to quickly switch between different screens.
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