Navigate & Flip Through Open Browser Tabs with Gestures in Safari 6
Safari 6 has a great new way to quickly navigate through open browser tabs using gestures. To access the new tab preview screen, either use a two-fingered pinch inwards, or click the little box on the far right of the tabs:
Once in tab previews, use a two-finger gesture left or right to flip between open tabs. Click on any preview to immediately open that tab.
You can also hit Command+Shift+\ to get to the same tab view, and then use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate between the tabs.
This feature is new to Mac OS X but it’s fairly similar to how Safari on iPhone behaves when you’re switching between tabs and should be familiar to anyone who comes from an iPhone background.
Safari 6 comes with OS X Mountain Lion and is available for Lion users as well.
Arrow keys after the shortcut? Why not ‘n’ and ‘p’? :(
An awesome tool for making gestures do what you want is Better Touch Tool: http://www.boastr.de It allows you to assign any keyboard shortcut, specific to any application, to a miriad of different gestures.
Personally I’ve always used ‘tip tap’ left and right to change tabs, without having to open any preview window first.
For quick switch from a tab to an other you can still create an Automator Service. Have a look at Find Safari Tab:
https://github.com/renard/AppleScripts/blob/master/Find_Safari_Tab.scpt
I want to like Safari but everytime I use it there’s a process in Activity Monitor, called “Safari Web Services” that’s always taking at least 20-30% CPU even with just 3-4 tabs open. That is just a battery drain.
You can also pinch two fingers together and it will expand the tabs view.
Now THAT is useful. Gestures and keyboard shortcuts are pretty pointless if you need to click something first.
This feature is not present on the Safari 6 that is available for Lion. It is a Mountain Lion only feature from what I can tell on Apple’s site.
http://www.apple.com/safari/#tabs