Forum Discussion
How to disable tabs in Edge?
I been looking for a way to disable tabs in Edge, but have been unsuccessful. Let me provide some additional details. The user in question is my mother, who is blind, so there is no use of the mouse, only keyboard commands. Alt+Tabbing around has always been standard practice to find the window she is looking for, but when multiple tabs open on one window it makes it extremely difficult for a blind person to navigate. Imagine having 3 Edge windows open with 5 tabs each. You would have to Alt+Tab to the window you think has the tab you're looking for, then Ctrl+Tab though the the 5 tabs to see if the page you are looking for is there...and if not, go onto the next window. If they were all separate windows with no tabs you could just press Alt+Tab till the speech software tells you you're on the window your looking for. Old Internet Explorer and Chrome have ways of making links open in new windows, but she must use Edge for a different device compatibility reason.
I am aware that Shft+Enter on a link would open a new window but that has it's own problems. The user would have to know when it was appropriate to open a new window. Old IE was setup so it would navigate in one window/tab, but if you hit Enter on a link external to the current site you were on, it would open a new window. Or if you hit Enter on a link in email it would open a new window.
I figured there has to be some way to disable horizontal tabs for Edge, maybe a reg key?
- Noel BurgessSteel Contributor
wbrown269 wrote:
Imagine having 3 Edge windows open with 5 tabs each. You would have to Alt+Tab to the window you think has the tab you're looking for, then Ctrl+Tab though the the 5 tabs to see if the page you are looking for is there...wbrown269
I don't know of any way to disable tabbed browsing, but I'd just point out that on Windows 10/11, you can arrange for Alt-Tab to cycle through all Edge tabs as well as other open windows, so no need to identify the window first. Settings > System > Multi-tasking > Alt+Tab to configure.- wbrown269Copper Contributor
Ahh, yes that looks like it might be the workaround.....at least it is the closest suggestion I've seen.
I'm going to set that up on her machine and see how it goes.
Thanks!