↓Skip to main content
Desktop Chrome Superpowers: Tab Search
fun AI generated “scenic village in misty mountains” image using the shape of the chrome logo via krea.ai

Desktop Chrome Superpowers: Tab Search

·552 words·3 mins·
Jared Stockton
Author
Jared Stockton
Solving Mobile Business Problems through Architecture, Documentation, Mentoring, and Collaboration
Table of Contents
Part 2 in a series where I explore some of my favorite Chrome Desktop features. See Part 1 to learn more about custom search engines. See Part 3 to learn about multiple profiles.

This article will be covering Tab Search functionality, including quick tab switching and the ability to find / re-open previously closed tabs.

How do I trigger the tab search UI?
#

Open the tab search UI by executing cmd + shft + a on macOS or ctrl + shft + a on windows/linux. Alternately, you can click on down caret icon in the top left or top right of Chrome

trigger Tab Search UI via keyboard shortcut followed by clicking on down caret

Note that some web pages tend to “steal” this keyboard shortcut for themselves rather than pass it through to Chrome (such as when editing a Medium article 🙃). For those sites, you can execute cmd + l on macOS or ctrl + l on windows/linux to first give focus to the Chrome address bar and then execute the tab search keyboard shortcut.

Searching open tabs
#

Once triggered, simply start typing in characters present in the:

  1. Name of the page
  2. Domain (such as medium.com or drive.google.com) — note that only the base URL is considered and the path isn’t searched.

to filter the open tabs. Use the arrow keys to highlight the desired tab and press enter to navigate to it.

searching for multiple tabs scattered across many Chrome windows

What other use cases can I use this shortcut for?
#

You can use Tab Search similar to App Switching on macOS (or recently opened files in IntelliJ IDEs) to quickly toggle between the current and last opened tabs.

1. Switch back and forth between two tabs (current and previous tabs)
#

  1. On tab 2, trigger tab search followed by an enter press to navigate to previously opened tab 1.
  2. On tab 1, trigger tab search followed by an enter press to navigate back to tab 2.

quickly swapping between open and previous tabs

2. Switch back to a recent tab
#

Trigger tab search, use the arrow keys to highlight a recent tab, and press enter.

switching back to recently opened tabs

3. Search for and re-open recently closed pages from your browsing history
#

Trigger tab search, start typing characters matching a recently closed tab, use the arrow keys to highlight the recently closed tab, and press enter to reopen it in a new tab.

search for and reopen recently closed tabs

Adding this skill to your toolbox will help you better find and triage open tabs (especially if you’re a tab hoarder like me 😄).

Thanks for reading!