Force Safari to use one window only

Submitted by JimD on Fri, 2008-04-11 12:56.

Mac OS X

Safari I had posted this tip over at The Graphic Mac last week and it was quite popular, so I thought I would share this Safari tip with the readers of CB as well.

One of the things that has kept me using Firefox over the last few years is Safari's insistence on opening links in new windows, rather than a new tab in the current window. It drives me nuts. I hate having multiple windows open.

Thankfully, the latest version of Safari (3.1) has a hidden feature that forces all links to open in a new tab, rather than a new window — even the stubborn sites like Google and Gmail finally stay in a single window.

All you have to do is open Terminal from your Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Hit the enter key and you're all set. To reverse this, simply retype the code into the Terminal and substitute false at the end where you previously typed true.

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Command Click ??

Submitted by 717 on Fri, 2008-04-11 13:08.

Command and *click* on the link, and it opens the link in a new tab. Has been working for years.

–717

Command + Click doesn't work all the time

Submitted by JimD on Fri, 2008-04-11 16:57.

The preferences don't respect the tab settings, and even command + click doesn't work on many sites (Google Gmail comes to mind). Besides, you shouldn't have to use a keyboard to click a link and have it open in the same window - that's just bad design on Apple's part.

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