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Terminal Tip: Safari 3.1 brings true one-window mode

by Nik Fletcher Mar 21st 2008 at 1:30PM

Are you a browser fiend? The sort of person who loves Safari, yet can't quite live with some of its peculiarities? If you hadn't guessed, I certainly am one of those people. I love the speed and simplicity of Safari, but it never worked as well as (say) Camino, particularly when it came to persuading links from the likes of Gmail to open in the same window. No number of SIMBL hacks (yes, hacks) seemed to persuade Safari to open links in the existing window - driving me away from Safari, and instead swear by Camino.

But that's about to change, as Apple has added a hidden preference to Safari 3.1 that allows you to tell Safari to stick to one window. Even in Gmail. Tipster Dennis Stevense, explains in a blog post that through a simple Terminal command, true one-window mode is finally, finally, here for Safari. All you need to enter is the command below into Terminal, hit enter, and you're sorted.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Thanks Dennis!

Update: If you want to reverse the change, it's a simple matter of entering the following into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool false


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Are you a browser fiend? The sort of person who loves Safari, yet can't quite live with some of its peculiarities? If you hadn't guessed, I...
 

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Kapernicus

YES!!!! THANK YOU!!! Firefox has become annoyingly slow in the last few releases and now I can finally start using Safari exclusively! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

April 09 2008 at 7:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Geoff

Now, if only there was a way to middle-click a tab to close it. Having to Cmd+W or click the X is not how I want to do this.

March 24 2008 at 12:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve

What about Safari on Windows?

March 23 2008 at 6:48 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kanny

1. How to uninstall Safari TwiceTabs now ?
2. with Pdf plugin from shueber.it , Camino provides two-finger scrolling, but Safari doesn't. Any preference tweaking possible ?

Thanks btw, this should reduce annoyance with gmail. And i don't see any issue with Capital letters typing in gmail like many are reporting.

March 22 2008 at 8:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to kanny's comment
kanny

Ok, TwiceTab was lying in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins . deleting it was fine as Safari continues to provide the same feature now.

March 22 2008 at 8:20 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
unruhschuh

Thanks!

March 22 2008 at 4:33 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ricco Ho

It's really cool! I've wished for this function since the time I switched from Firefox to Safari. (Another is mouse gesture). Now it comes true! Thanks!

March 21 2008 at 11:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Charles

Still opens the new tab in front of the current one....

March 21 2008 at 9:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Andrew A.

"No amount of SIMBL plugins?"...SafariStand has done this since it came out...

March 21 2008 at 9:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
NuMystic

Is there any way to alter this terminal command so that the new tab created isn't automatically selected at the time of clicking?

On my three button mouse, using the third button on all sites (except gmail) pops open the link in a new tab while letting me stay on the original page.

Now, having entered this terminal command I can finally have links in gmail messages open in a new tab, but I'm instantly forced to the newly created tab. Any way to stay in the original message when these new tabs are created?

Thanks in advance!

March 21 2008 at 8:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to NuMystic's comment
Rick

Awesome. Just what I needed. But how do you undo this in the terminal, in case I ever need to?

March 21 2008 at 7:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Rick's comment
NuMystic

Yes, please let us know what terminal command needs to be entered to restore the default behaviour. The suggestion above to replace "write" with "delete" didn't work for me.

March 21 2008 at 7:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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