How to close a browser tab with the keyboard

Here we go with another tutorial on functions that can help you in your day to day. Today we will talk about how to close a browser tab and complementary functions to it.

I'm not going to go into what you 'll use a shortcut to quickly close a tab, guys. We will say that you just like to be efficient and nothing beyond that.

So great! We would love to help you in your quest to be more efficient users.

By the way, if you are an apple user, you can also be guided by this tutorial, since these shortcuts are practically a standard. The difference will be that instead of pressing Ctrl , you must press Command and instead of pressing Shift / Shift , you must press Option .

Index of contents

The science of shortcuts

If you have followed some of our latest tutorials or read other websites, you will know that we have quite a few shortcuts at our disposal. From the well-known Ctrl + C (copy) and Ctrl + V (paste), to some more complex and less used ones such as Alt + ← (last page of history).

Learning them does not cost too much and greatly increases our efficiency in navigating and using the tools we have. But investing time in adding this to our life is already our own decision.

On the other hand, not only do we have shortcuts, but we also have functionalities grouped into unique keys. It is a very interesting topic that deserves a little more development, although here we will only focus on shortcuts to close tabs and little else.

Shortcuts to close a tab or several

Well, you may know the famous Alt + F4 , a command that works in almost any part of the computer and that serves to close the current active window. It is not exactly what we want, but it can be useful in other circumstances.

The one we do have in Google Chrome and in other browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox is Ctrl + W. This shortcut is implemented in most browsers and serves to close the tab that is currently active.

Close multiple tabs at once with Ctrl + Shift + W

Similar to Alt + F4 , there is another command in browsers that serves to close, not only a tab, but an entire window. The Ctrl + Shift / Shift + W shortcut increases the powers of the normal version and closes the entire window. It doesn't matter how many tabs you have, they will all be eradicated.

Close multiple tabs in multiple windows with Ctrl + Shift + Q

Finally, we have Ctrl + Shift / Shift + Q, a command that shares a shortcut with Alt + F4 (only when we are in browsers) that completely closes the browser. If we have 4 tabs distributed among 3 windows, when pressing this shortcut they will all be closed.

Normally a floating window appears warning you "Hey, you're going to close 4 tabs in 3 windows, be careful!" , but it is easy to press it without thinking and roll it brown.

If you have something important in one of the tabs, you can be a little more secure, since the browser will ask you before if you want to continue. Whether you have an unsaved file or a download, the generic rule is to ask the user.

Shortcuts to open or reopen tabs

In case you are a big man and trying the commands you mess up more than you should, I will add other useful commands to recover what was lost.

First of all, we have the opposite of Ctrl + W (close tab) , which is Ctrl + T. This shortcut is used to open a new tab.

Open new tab with Ctrl + T

For reasons that I will not judge, another famous shortcut and similar to this is Ctrl + N, which helps us to open a new window with a blank tab. Adding the Shift / Shift key to that combination will result in a new incognito window. In Firefox and Microsoft Edge this is done with the combination Ctrl + Shift / Shift + P.

Open incognito window with Ctrl + Shift + N (Ctrl + Shift + P in Firefox and Microsoft Edge)

Quiet 'stop' it . This is where the last of the commands that I will comment on today comes in, the invincible Ctrl + Shift / T + T. This option is the same in Microsoft Edge, but in Firefox it is done with Ctrl + Shift / Shift + N.

With this key combination we will not only open a new tab, but we will open the last tab that we close. We can do this as many times as there are cached websites, but you have range to reopen more than a dozen without fear.

The grace of this is that if someone jokes you and closes the website you were reading, you can boast of coconut and reopen it instantly. Also, if the last tab you closed was an entire window with other tabs at once, using this shortcut will open a new window with all tabs closed.

Last conclusions

If science and religion were born from necessity , from laziness we have obtained engineering and keyboard shortcuts. A fair price, right?

As you may have noticed, the difference between web browsers is noticeable. Each one has certain shortcuts for certain actions, although the most important ones do agree.

We hope that this short tutorial has helped you and that it speeds up your method of surfing the web. As we have recommended, there are many other shortcuts that you can learn. Even to turn off Windows with a keyboard shortcut, but we will leave that for another time.

If you want to share another key combination that you use a lot or have any questions, comment it without fear in the drawer below.