Forum Discussion
MissyQ
Microsoft
MicrosoftDiscussion: Add ability to close tabs via double-click
Hey Insiders, thanks for your continued feedback to help us improve Microsoft Edge! Recently we have noticed a growing trend in requests to support double clicking on a tab to close it. Even just receiving this feedback is helpful in highlighting the importance of efficiency and ease when managing and closing tabs, and also communicates a user problem that the tab close button can sometimes be difficult to interact with quickly.
As for the best way to address this user problem, we’d like to get additional context from you on the benefits and risks of different options. While double clicking on a tab can indeed be a very easy and quick way to close a tab, it also comes with the risk that if users are quickly clicking to switch between tabs, they might accidentally close a tab unintentionally by clicking on one twice. Given accidentally closing tabs is another top pain point users have shared with us, we want to be especially careful that we aren’t making that problem worse. We also wanted to share that another existing mouse-centric method for quickly closing a tab with a single click is to middle (mouse-wheel) click on a tab, which it could be argued is easier and faster than double clicking, though of course not everyone has a mouse that supports middle (mouse-wheel) click.
Given the potential risks of double clicking and the alternative middle click solution discussed here, please let us know if and why you feel double clicking is a superior method. We're also curious to know if you have any additional solutions to the problem of easily and quickly closing a tab that haven’t been discussed and avoid some of the risks discussed here. Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions, we couldn't do this without you!
- The Microsoft Edge Team
- WHY am i even here? pointless really as everything is hush hush and covered masked up anyway 😂
Hi MissyQ and all
I don't have the time to read through all the replies but hope others see it in a similar way.
I guess the wish for closing tabs by double-clicking arises when you have vertical tabs and hide titles of websites are enabled. At least for me this makes it a little tedious to close a tab either with the mouse, the touchpad or on the touch screen.
I have two suggestions to resolve this and the accidental closing of a tab:
- Add the [x] to close in vertical tabs as a separate column next to the favicon.
Benefit: You don't have to hover over the tab or touch it and then move to the [x]. - Add a quick pop-up to undo the closing of a tab.
Benefit: If you accidentally close a tab one can quickly re-open it.
Just my two cents...
- Add the [x] to close in vertical tabs as a separate column next to the favicon.
- This feature was recently added (Edge 107.0.1418.35 on macOS confirmed, not sure when it landed) and it is amazing.
I love using it and thank you for making it optional. Way easier to use vertical tabs now (which are honestly the best way with macOS's top menu bar).
Thank you thank you thank you!Wooohoo! I also finally found the toggle (as it came as a pop-up notification the first time), as well, for anyone looking for it.
Settings → Appearance → Customize Browser → "Use double-click to close browser tabs"
This is on Edge 108.0.1462.46 (Official build) (arm64), running on macOS Monterey 12.6.2.
I have absolutely zero of the problems many other users were afraid about: not accidentally closing tabs, not confused, etc.
Have no idea what 99% of this thread is worried about: obviously, it is an optional feature.
- Double clicking does come with some awful consequences, but we need the option to quickly close the sleeping tabs. As it is now, it's a pain when I'm not able to close a tab since they go to sleep. I do a lot of research and comparisons views so switching back and forth is really slow to close a unneedeed tab.
- Hi, in settings, hopefully you can add a double tap to close the tab. Because this is the habit of Chinese netizens using browsers all the year round. In addition, there are more people watching the live broadcast now, and the video window can be resized at will, which is something that many browsers can do. Personally hope that there are many functions, which can be modified in the settings. rather than direct castration. Hope for variety and choice. Because I am a disabled person, normal people with many functions may not care, but it is very difficult for disabled people, such as the middle button to close tabs and other operations. I hope more personalized settings can be set to make the experience of ordinary users and special users more convenient and comfortable! thanks.
Some people think this is good, but some people want to never add this feature. For me, I'm used to using the "Ctrl + W" keyboard shortcut to close the index tab. If Microsoft adds this feature to Edge, I think it will make Microsoft Edge harder to use. Come to think of it, if edge I'm using now has added this feature, it would be very serious if I just wanted to toggle the index tab and accidentally press it twice to turn it off. I don't want Edge to be like that, and I don't want Edge to do that, so I still hope not to add this feature.
Have you ever use cent browser, it's also chrome based. And this browser has an option in setting allow user to toggle if "double click close tab" is enabled.
So as Firefox, in Firefox, you just go to "about:config"(something like "chrome:flags") there is also an option to enable close tab by double click. And it doesn't hurt anything, if you don't want this feature, you can disable it anytime.
Thank you for the status change!
When it will be possible to test it - everyone is waiting for it!
- 我来告诉你为什么会有双击关闭选项卡这种事情。据我所知，最早来自 XP 时代的 360 安全浏览器，它在当时提供了种类繁多的关闭选项卡的方法，比如左键双击、右键双击、左右键同时击、中键单击、中键双击。默认情况下，左键双击和中键单击是关闭网页的方法。然而大多数电脑使用者不知道鼠标中键是可以按下去的，因此会有更多的人习惯通过双击来关闭网页。
MissyQ
I don't think there is any risk.
First of all, the scroll wheel depends on the hardware. If there is no scroll wheel or it is broken, what should I do?
Secondly, if the user wants to switch tabs, there will not be a quick click, so this kind of mis-closed tab does not exist.
Finally, I think the function of double-clicking to close the tab can be combined with two other optional functions. One is to hide the close button when the tabs are opened enough, and the other is that the mouse wheel can be switched in the horizontal tab bar.- there is almost no mouse without scroll wheel today. Furthermore, since when programs and features are developed according to user's broken hardware? Here is the user's responsibility to fix the own hardware. What if the left mouse button is broken? Still, windows works with the left mouse button for most of his functions.
The alternative for such users, is to just move the mouse pointer towards the X of the tab and click it with the left mouse button.
There is no reason for not including a fast tab closing clicking on the scroll wheel- have you ever thought about trackpad users?
if a trackpad user wants to close a tab in background, the user has to switch to that tab and then press ctrl+w, otherwise this user has to find that tiny little x button to close it.
