A shortcut is in the works for rapid mouse navigation
Anyone who’s found themselves working on a computer for any appreciable amount of time has no doubt picked up a bunch of handy keyboard shortcuts, shaving time off repetitive tasks and helping optimize their workflow. Google Chrome power users know all about its shortcuts for opening, closing, and navigating between tabs, and now we’re learning about an upcoming one for mouse input in particular, with a new double click action to close the active tab.
Hitting ctrl + W on your keyboard closes the currently active tab in Chrome for Windows, but the standard way of doing things with your mouse involves clicking on the little “X” beside the tab name. If you have dozens of tabs open, getting to these tiny buttons could require surgeon-steady hands, a precise mouse, and a smidge of patience. Thankfully, Chrome feature tracker and Android Police reader @Leopeva64 shares evidence of work on a mouse double-click shortcut in the Chromium Gerrit. The shortcut should allow closing tabs with a simple double-click action, which we don’t often see in browsers.
Arguably, Chrome is only following in the footsteps of Microsoft Edge, here. Requests for this feature caught Microsoft’s attention on Edge Insider support threads late in 2020. The feature was on the company’s to-do list for a whopping 113 weeks before it was eventually added as a browser feature eight months ago, besides the pre-existing middle mouse button click-to-close shortcut.
If you wouldn’t touch Edge with a ten-foot pole, but do concede that the double-click-to-close-tab functionality sounds pretty convenient, there’s a handy Chrome extension you could install instead. Using it, you can open closed tabs with your choice of a double right click, double click of either mouse button, or triple click of either mouse button.
This extension also lets you reopen accidentally closed tabs by holding down shift and repeating that input combo. We would be foolhardy to expect so much customizability from Google’s upcoming implementation, and if you prefer anything but the double click action, you might be better off sticking to the extension even when the feature rolls out.
