Force Safari to open links in new tabs on Mac

When I was using Windows a couple years ago, Firefox was really my major choice (I will say 95% of my internet browsing). However, when I switch over onto Mac, I believe I have found my alternate browser, Safari.

Despite the fact that Firefox is able to have multiple plug-ins installed, I didn’t use Safari very much before for it doesn’t fit my browser-using-habit. Usually when I click a link with the “_blank”  target, if I am using Firefox, I am expecting a new tab will be open and I can just switch to another tab. Yet, when I am using Safari, my experience was changed since Safari tend to open the link in a new window. Sometimes my screen will be full of Safari windows if I am doing research on a topic and have to click multiple links. To me, that’s just not too user-friendly.

The truth is that, Safari does support browsing in tabs, here are the hot keys for Safari in Windows and Mac:

Ctrl (Command)-click: Opens a link in a new tab.
Ctrl (Command)-Shirt-click: Opens a link in a new tab and selects it.
Ctrl (Command)-Alt-click: Opens a link in a new window behind the current one.
Ctrl (Comamnd)-Alt-Shirt-click: Opens a link in a new window and selects it.

Want to try them? Click this link with the hot keys.

If you are not used to holding so many keys whenever you try to click a link, please keep reading and this is why I am writing this post today. All you need to do is actually give Mac a command that you want to enable browsing new links in new tabs, so please go to /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, when prompt, type in

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

then exit Terminal, and now try click this link again. Do you see the difference?

If you want to restore to its original setting, just process the same thing and change the last word in the command line from “true” to “false”.