How To Duplicate Tabs In Firefox

Sometimes you may want to duplicate tabs (page that you are viewing) into a New Tab – or even a New Window.

Of course you could just copy the website address, open a new tab (or browser window) and then paste the address into the address bar but that is long winded – it also loses where you were in the page and the history of the page so you can’t page back or forward.

There are much better ways to duplicate tabs in Firefox. Duplicating a page should keep the page history and your current location in the page. [IE and Chrome users – see Duplicate Tabs in IE and Chrome]

Firefox doesn’t include the simple options used by IE and Chrome – you can’t just right click on a tab to duplicate it. There are some manual methods given below. An alternative way is to use an add-on like Tab Mix Plus – this adds the option to just right click on a tab to duplicate it into a new tab or a new Firefox window.

A.  Duplicate tabs into a new tab:

1. Hold down the CTRL key and drag (hold left mouse button down whilst moving the cursor) the current tab across to an empty space on the tab bar or to a position in between two other tabs – then let go of the mouse button – the tab will be duplicated to your chosen position.

Tip: as you move the cursor across open tabs, a black arrow shows you where the duplicated tab would be displayed – in the example below, when I release the left mouse button a duplicate of the 3rd (Movies) tab will be created in between the first and second tabs:

duplicate tabs in firefox 1

2. ALTERNATIVE – install the Tab Mix Plus (TMP) extension from Mozilla Addons here.

After installation and Firefox restart, you have to choose whether you want to use Firefox or TMP session restore – keep it as Firefox default or you will encounter problems with the later steps.

Tab Mix Plus automatically adds a new Duplicate Tab option:

Right click on a tab and select ‘Duplicate Tab’:

duplicate tabs in firefox 2

You can also use the hotkey shortcut – press CTRL+ALT+T at the same time.

Duplicate tabs into a new Firefox window:

1. Duplicate the tab into a new tab – same as in method 1 above.

Now that you have a duplicate tab, left click on the duplicate tab and (keeping the left button down) drag it down towards the taskbar (a few inches should do but drag to the taskbar if in doubt) then let go of the left mouse button.

You will now see the duplicate tab is in a new Firefox window that has magically appeared in the taskbar.

2. ALTERNATIVE – install Tab Mix Plus as described above.

Go to Firefox Menu bar \ Addons to see the list of installed addons.

Opposite Tab Mix Plus click on ‘Options’ to display the TMP Options window.

In TMP Options, select the Menu Icon then the Tab Context Menu as shown below:

duplicate tabs in firefox 3

Click (to tick) the third option – ‘Duplicate to New Window’ then press OK to save your changes.

Now you can right click on a tab and select ‘Duplicate to New Window’ to open the current tab in a new window.

Issue With Firefox 13+

Using TMP you may find that the duplicated website address is copied into the address bar of a new Firefox window but the page doesn’t load unless you press F5 (or click in the address bar to select the address and press Enter) –  this is due to the new ‘restored background tabs’ feature introduced in Firefox 13.

The feature was intended for faster startup – restored background tabs are not loaded by default. However, when a tab is duplicated to a new window by TMP, this feature also stops it loading up automatically.

To change this you would need to change the setting for all restored background tabs, not just duplicates:

  • Go to Firefox Menu \ Options \ General
  • In the Startup section, un-tick ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ and press OK to finish – tabs duplicated by TMP in a new window should now load and display automatically.

If the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ option is ticked but greyed out, change the drop down option ‘When Firefox starts’ to ‘Show my windows and tabs from last time’ then un-tick the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box and change back the ‘When Firefox starts’ option to whatever it was before – then press OK to finish.

Conclusion

It is easy to duplicate tabs in Firefox – into a new tab or a new window.

There are other manual methods and add-ons/extensions to do this but the above guides are the quickest methods.