Convert All Windows to Tabs in Safari with a Keyboard Shortcut on Mac

Jul 2, 2012 - 3 Comments

Merge multiple browser windows into tabs with a keyboard shortcut

It’s easy to find yourself 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 merge-windows-to-tabs feature a step further and turn it into a keyboard shortcut, letting you instantly convert an ocean of windows into a single Safari window with just a keystroke of your choosing on the Mac.

How to Convert All Safari Windows into Tabs by Keystroke in Mac OS

Here is how to make your own “Merge Windows to Tabs” keystroke for Safari in Mac OS X:

  1. Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu
  2. Click on “Keyboard” and select the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab
  3. Choose “Application Shortcuts” from the list on the left, then click the [+] plus icon to add a new shortcut
  4. Select “Safari.app” from the Application pull down list, then type “Merge All Windows” as the menu title
  5. Convert windows to tabs with a keyboard shortcut in Safari

  6. Finally, set the keyboard shortcut to use, I went with Control+Command+W as a variation of the common close windows command
  7. Click “Add” then go back to Safari, open a few windows, and hit your keyboard shortcut to verify it worked

If the keyboard shortcut didn’t work, you may have chosen a keystroke that conflicts with another function, or you may have not entered the menu title properly.

Custom keyboard shortcuts are case sensitive, so be sure to use the proper capitalization and exact spelling.

And that’s it, once you’re finished you can hit your Merge All Windows keyboard shortcut at any time in Safari to join all the open windows into a single window full of tabs instead. This is basically a keystroke that converts Safari browser windows into tabs on the fly, and it’s quite useful for those of us who spend a lot of time in a web browser. Give it a try!

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

3 Comments

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  1. Brian says:

    Well it’d help if I READ better, it’s merging Windows not Tabs! So it DOES work!

  2. tallz monz says:

    Cant find Safari.app in the drop down list…could you work on getting the iPhoto to work in Mail…

    • Brian says:

      Followed instructions exactly, doesn’t work, didn’t see any other keyboard shortcuts using this command, and the application for me just shows “Safari”, not “Safari.app”.

      Help?

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