How to Merge All Open Windows Into Tabs in Safari for Mac Instantly

Sep 15, 2010 - 4 Comments

Safari icon It’s easy to wind up with an overwhelming number of Safari web browser windows open on a Mac (or Windows too). If you’re like me you tend to have a million browser windows open at the same time, as you read, browse, and research things around the web. This can make it really difficult to keep track of sites that are open and finding things can be difficult as you get lost in the sea of windows.

Thankfully Safari has a great feature that lets you merge all of the open windows into tabs within a single browser window.

How to Merge Safari Windows on Mac into Tabs

Window Merging works the same in Mac OS X Safari and Safari for Windows, here’s what you’ll want to do:

  • From anywhere in Safari, pull down the “Window menu” and then select “Merge All Windows”

How to merge all Windows in Safari on Mac to tabs

That’s all it takes, Safari will do it’s magic and merge all the open windows into tabs, even if the open windows have their own tabs.

The actual merging of windows can take a while if you have many tabs and windows open, so if you’re using Safari with a hundred plus windows and tabs don’t be surprised if the process is a bit sluggish to complete. But once it’s done, all the windows in Safari will be in a single window with tabs instead.

This trick effectively converts Safari browser windows into Safari browser tabs, which can be easier to manage for some Mac users.

Now your ocean of Safari windows will be merged into a single window with a lot of tabs instead, making it a bit easier to sort through and manage.

Tabs are a great feature and in many ways are far superior to individual web browser windows within Safari. By the way, you can help to prevent the million browser window problem by making new browser windows open into Tabs instead, an easy settings adjustment that can be made in the Safari browser.

merge windows to tabs safari

If you find yourself using this often, consider making it into a keystroke.

Either way, don’t forget this feature the next time you’re overwhelmed by browser windows, just merge them into tabs, and make your Safari browsing life easier!

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

4 Comments

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  1. David S says:

    I’m someone who’s got 125 tabs open in 25 different browser windows. What I’d LOVE is the ability to treat each BROWSER window as a set of tabs (where I can name each tab for a topic) and within that tab is another collection of related tabs.

    I can’t tell from this description if this is close to what I’ll get when I do that “Merge All Windows” thing, or if I’ll end up with ONE browser window that has 125 tabs in it.

    Also, what if you don’t want to “Merge All Windows”, but rather collect _some_ browser windows together, and leave others separate?

    (I have 14 desktops / spaces where I keep things open for different things I’m working on. I do not want all of my browser windows mashed-up into one single browser window on one desktop! This might be a Good Idea for people who don’t know what Spaces are, but once you DO, it makes far less sense.)

  2. […] in a sea of open web browser windows, but with Safari there’s a great feature that lets you merge windows into tabs. We’ll take that nice little feature a step further and turn it into a keyboard shortcut, […]

  3. John Fisher says:

    I love the Merge All Windows shortcut. You can also create a keyboard shortcut for this by going to ‘System Preferences’, click on ‘Keyboard’, then ‘Application Shortcuts’. Hit the ‘+’ button, choose ‘Safari’, create a Title and add your preferred keyboard combination (I use ‘⇧ + +M’).

  4. Ammon says:

    Leave it to Apple to build in an elegant solution to a common problem. You can drag tabs from one window to another in Chrome, but as there is a general lack of menu items in Chrome it could be a bit time consuming if (for whatever reason) you had many multiple windows instead of tabs in a single window.

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