Tab Trick
A person watching over my shoulder asked “How are you switching around so fast?” and I realized that while most readers here know this trick, some may not, and it’s awfully useful.
[Update: I published an earlier version of this in 2012 but have got that “How do you” question a couple times recently, so maybe it’ll still be new news to a few people.]
In all the browers I use, Command-1 takes you to your leftmost tab, command-2 to the next one over, and so on up to Command-8. Command-9 selects the rightmost tab. Also, you can right-click on a tab and “pin” it; which shrinks it down to just the favicon, and moves it as far left as it can go.
So the trick is, pin the same heavily-used tabs in the same place, and leave them there forever. In my main browser (currently Safari) it’s like this:
SMS/RCS texts, linked to my Pixel. This is a Google thing, not sure if you need to be on Android for it to work. But for those serious conversations that remain in text-land, it’s awfully nice when you can resort to an actual keyboard.
Calendar.
The local staging version of this blog, where I review and edit articles.
What you are now reading.
Blog comment review/approval.
Quamina (probably moving to Codeberg soon).
Bluesky; but it seems I never go there any more unless I’m following links from elsewhere. To be honest, not sure what I’d replace it with.
Have fun!
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Kashif Khan (May 24 2026, at 11:56)
Google Messsages for Web only works on Android when you use Google Messages app on device to send/receive SMS/MMS/RCS. It doesnt work with any other SMS app
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From: David Megginson (May 24 2026, at 13:06)
This approach works well for someone like me, a tab minimalist who uses tabs like apps, the same way you describe in your post.
There's another kind of brain out there that uses tabs as bookmarks and keeps dozens or hundreds of them open at once. I suspect for those people, the idea of having a just few tabs permanently open to key websites would seem strange.
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From: PJ (May 24 2026, at 17:15)
To do that at a terminal level, use tmux (or ghostty). At a window-manager level, try i3 :) I use all of the above - Meta- switches windows, ctrl for tabs, ctrl-b for tmux windows. So I get the same reaction from watchers... and using any other wm like Apple's or Microsoft's feels like wading through molasses.
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From: Dave Pawson (May 24 2026, at 23:44)
Thanks Tim.
More of the same please - very useful
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From: David (May 25 2026, at 07:18)
I have remaped [ and ] to move to previous and next tab (without modifiers), using the wonderful Karabiner-Elements tool on Mac OS. I also have the right command key remaped to send a command click action (open link in tab behind) and the left option key to close tab. So they function like physical "mouse buttons" for my laptop trackpad.
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