LAURA PALMARO: Hi, I’m Laura and I’m on the Chrome accessibility
team at Google.
In this video, I’m going to show you some ways to use Chrome on your Mac using only
the keyboard.
We’re going to focus on tabs and links.
I’m going to show you ways to open multiple tabs, navigate between them, and close tabs.
I’m also going to show you ways to open links, whether it’s in the same tab, or
a different one.
Let’s get started!
When you open your Chrome browser, one tab is open and current by default.
You can’t have the Chrome browser open with no tabs open at the same time.
Having multiple tabs open is great for multitasking.
For example, I can have Gmail open in one tab and maybe my Google calendar open in another
for reference.
So let’s open a new tab now.
This is one of the most commonly-used keyboard shortcuts in Chrome.
To open a new tab, I hold down Command and press T as in tab.
Notice this shortcut does two things: it opens a new tab, and then immediately jumps to it
so this is now the current tab.
Let’s close that now by pressing Command W.
But what if I closed it a bit too quickly and I need to go back?
Now I’m going to re-open that last tab.
To do this -- remember how I opened a new tab?
Command + T?
Can you guess how I’m going to reopen it?
If you guessed Command + Shift + T, great!
Notice that it re-opens in a new tab, and I can do this for up to eight recently closed
tabs.
Now that I have more than one tab open, I’m going to show you how to cycle through them.
To move forward, hold down Command and Option, and press the Right arrow.
So here I’m moving forward through the open tabs.
Command Option Left arrow cycles me backward.
I can also jump directly to a tab.
If I hold down Command and press any number from 1 to 9, I’ll jump to the tab that matches
that number.
Chrome numbers tabs from left to right, starting with 1.
And one last thing.
Let’s open a new window instead of a new tab.
Press Command + N as in new, to do that.
We’re going to leave this window open for now and get back to our other open tabs.
This shortcut isn’t specifically for Chrome but it’s actually a Mac shortcut.
I press Command + Shift + Tilde.
The tilde is just below the Escape key.
Chrome for the Mac has several ways to open links using just the keyboard.
After pressing Tab to get to a link here, we’ve got some choices.
Ready?
Let’s check it out!
You can open a link in the current tab...
You can also open a link in a new tab and then jump to it in one step...
You can even open a link in a completely new window.
Let’s explore those now.
So…Here’s opening a link in the current tab.
You probably can guess it -- you just press Enter.
Now we’re going to open a link in a new tab and jump to that tab.
I press Tab until the focus is on the link I want to open.
Next, I hold down Command and Shift, and press Enter and...there it is!
To open a link in a new background tab, I make sure the focus is on the link I want…
...And then I press Command + Enter.
Notice it opens in a new tab, a “background” tab, because it’s in the background -- makes
sense, right?
Maybe I want to open a link in a completely new browser window.
I can press Shift Enter to do that.
And if it happens to be a download link, press Option + Enter.
For the quickest way back to my home page, I press Command + Shift + H as in home.
So we’ve seen some helpful ways to use tabs and links in Chrome for the Mac using just
the keyboard.
To provide our team with feedback or ask any questions, join our Google Group and drop
us an email at chrome-accessibility@googlegroups.com.
To learn more about Google Accessibility as a whole, check out more at Google.com/accessibility.
To sign up for user studies to explore new features and to help shape Google products,
go to Google.com/usability.
Also, look for additional videos about more ways to make Chrome easier to use.
Again, I’m Laura, and on behalf of our whole team, thanks for watching!
And don’t forget, we have a handful of other videos about Chrome Accessibility.
Check them out here!