Docs›Tabs and layouts

Tabs

Open, close and reopen tabs; pin them or keep them in Essentials; let them sleep, mute them and move them around.

Open and close tabs#

• Ctrl+T opens a floating search over the page: type an address or a search and press Enter, and the result opens in a new tab. To get an empty new tab instead, turn off Ctrl+T opens a floating search in Settings › Tabs. Ctrl+Alt+T always opens a new tab with the start page.
• The + button (New tab in the sidebar) does the same as Ctrl+T.
• To close a tab, press Ctrl+W, click the × on the tab, or middle-click it.
• Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last tab you closed. See Closed tabs and sessions.
• Links you open in a new tab load in the background. To jump to them instead, turn off Open links in new tabs in the background in Settings › Tabs.
• Closing the last tab closes the window. To keep the window open, turn off Close the window when closing the last tab in Settings › Tabs.

Select several tabs#

Hold Ctrl or Shift and click tabs to select more than one. Right-click any of them and the menu acts on all of them: close, pin, mute, hibernate, group, move or show them side by side.

Pinned tabs#

Right-click a tab and choose Pin tab. A pinned tab moves to the top of the workspace (with tabs on top or in the dock, to the start of the row) and remembers the page you pinned it on. If you browse away, Go back to pinned page in its menu returns to that page; in the sidebar, a small button on the tab does the same. Pin this page instead makes the current page the pinned one. Unpin tab turns it back into an ordinary tab.

Pinned tabs belong to their workspace. Close other tabs leaves them open, and so does closing unused tabs automatically.

Essentials#

Essentials are tabs you want in every workspace, such as your mail or calendar. Right-click a tab and choose Add to Essentials. In the sidebar they appear as tiles above the workspace; with tabs on top or in the dock they come first, with the pinned tabs. They stay put when you switch workspaces, and remember their page like pinned tabs. Remove from Essentials puts the tab back in the current workspace.

Sleeping tabs#

Tabs you haven’t used for a while hibernate: Luma frees their memory, and they reload when you click them. In the sidebar a hibernated tab shows a small moon, and its tooltip says Hibernated — click to wake. Tabs playing sound, in a call, downloading or with an unsaved form stay awake.

You set this in Settings › Performance:

• Hibernate inactive tabs: after 5, 15 or 30 minutes, after 1 hour (the default), after a number of minutes you choose with Custom, or Never.
• Memory limit: No limit by default. With a limit, when Luma uses more memory than that, tabs you haven’t used for at least 5 minutes go to sleep, least recently used first.
• Also hibernate pinned tabs: off by default.
• Always keep these sites awake: type a site, such as example.com, and choose Add.
• Efficiency mode: background tabs sleep after 10 minutes, and the interface skips animations and blur effects.

To put a tab to sleep yourself, right-click it and choose Hibernate. Hibernate background tabs, in the command palette, puts every tab but the current one to sleep.

Tab previews#

Rest the pointer on a tab that isn’t the current one. After a moment a card shows its title, its address and a picture of the page as you last saw it. While a card is showing, moving to the next tab shows its card straight away. Click the tab to go to it.

Mute a tab#

A tab playing sound shows a speaker in the sidebar and in the tab row: click it to mute or unmute the tab. You can also press Ctrl+M for the current tab, or right-click a tab and choose Mute site.

If you leave a tab while a video plays with sound, the video carries on in a small floating window and comes back when you return to the tab. To stop this, turn off Picture-in-picture when you switch tabs in Settings › Tabs. More in Audio and video.

Close unused tabs automatically#

In Settings › Tabs, Close unused tabs closes tabs you haven’t opened for a while: After 12 hours, After 24 hours, After 3 days or After 7 days. It is set to Never at first. Pinned tabs, Essentials, tabs playing sound and tabs in split view are never closed this way. The tabs it closes go to Recently closed, so Ctrl+Shift+T brings them back.

Move tabs#

• Drag a tab up or down the list, or along the row or the dock, to put it somewhere else.
• Drag it onto a workspace button, at the foot of the sidebar or in the dock, to move it to that workspace. In the sidebar you can also drop it on the + beside them to start a new workspace with it.
• Drag it onto the left or right part of the page to show it side by side with the current tab (see Split view).
• Drag it out of the window to open it in a new window, or onto another Luma window to move it there.
• Right-click it and choose Move to a workspace, Move to new workspace… or Move to new window. Duplicate opens a copy.