Changing Firefox Tab Cycle Order

Question

When you use Ctrl-Tab in Firefox, you move through tabs in the order that they are listed in the tab bar at the top of the window. I would prefer that when I use Ctrl-Tab the next tab that I switch to is the most resently used tab. That way if I have two tabs I am using frequently I can easily switch between them without having to manually modify the ordering of the tabs via drag/drop. This is a feature that Opera has which I find to be very productive. Does anyone know of a setting or plug-in that will accomplish this for me?

Answer 1

1. Type about:config in address bar and then Enter
2. Type "ctrl" in the "filter" box
3. Double-click "browser.ctrlTab.previews" item so the value becomes "true"

Answer 2

I would recommend Tab Mix Plus. It allows you to completely customize the way the tab menus function. Quite a bit of configurable behavior.

Answer 3

Two extensions you could check Ctrl-Tab and Tab-Mix-Plus

---

Ctrl-Tab -- the highlighted part is what you want.

Ctrl+Tab navigation for Firefox tabs:

• Tabs are presented in most-recently-used order,
  similar to Alt+Tab on various operating systems
• Releasing Tab and pressing it again moves to the next preview
• Pressing W closes the selected tab
• Releasing Ctrl switches to the selected tab
• Hidden preferences: browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed

Ctrl+Shift+A / Cmd+Shift+A shows all tabs in a grid:

• Shows all open tabs
• Tabs can be closed by middle clicking
• Search field filters tabs based on their titles and addresses, Enter selects the first tab

---

Tab-Mix-Plus -- also supports the MRU scheme you want; with lots of other features

Includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

Answer 4

In Firefox 7 (maybe earlier versions too?), go to about:config and set the option browser.ctrlTab.previews to true.

If you release the Ctrl key quickly after Ctrl+Tab, you will get the MRU tab switching behavior you described (without previews).

Answer 5

If you enable the tab preview functionality in Firefox then this changes the ctrl+tab behavior so that it moves through the tabs in the order that they were most recently used.

To enable the tab preview functionality in Firefox 11 do the following:

1. Open a new browser tab in Firefox
2. Enter "about:config" (without the quotes) in to the address bar and press 'Enter'
3. Click on the 'I’ll be careful, I promise!' button.
4. In the 'Search' textbox that appears enter the following: browser.ctrlTab.previews
5. (This should bring up the currently set preference value)
6. If the current value is 'false' then double click anywhere on the preference - this should change the Status to 'user set' and the Value to 'true'
7. Close the tab (there is no need to save anywhere)
8. The browser should now display the required behavior

If you ctrl+tab quickly enough then you will not see the preview overlay.

Please note that this is just more granular description of the instructions given above for those less savvy.

I hope this helps.

Thanks, Jonathan

Answer 6

You could just use ctrl+shift+tab and ctrl+tab to go back and forth. That's how most things work and it makes more sense.