I’ve gone on record many times to say that I’m not a tab hoarder. When tab groups started development for Chrome, I was glad it was on the way, but I knew that its arrival wouldn’t change much for me. Not everyone is in this camp, however, and many of you out there deal with lots of tabs opening and closing on a daily basis, so small workarounds and hacks can go a long way towards making your life a bit easier.
Today’s little trick falls into that category. It’s a shortcut that has existed for quite some time in Chrome OS and I’m not honestly sure when it was added, but I’m sure glad I now know it exists. What is it? A 3-finger click to instantly open up an entire bookmarks folder.
Here’s how it works. Create a folder of bookmarks and then perform a 3-finger click on the trackpad (or scroll-wheel click on your mouse) on your folder and all those bookmarks will instantly open. Each individual bookmark will open in it’s own tab, too, so it makes for a very simple way to get a specific tab setup ready to roll with a single click.
For me, I use this shortcut regularly when I post an article. We share each post on social media and via email updates, so there are a handful of tabs I need to open the moment I hit that publish button. Now, instead of manually opening all those tabs, I can simply 3-finger click on my folder that contains all the bookmarks for the sites I need and all those tabs open up simultaneiously and are ready for my input.
As an additional tip, a 3-finger click (or mouse scroll-wheel click) will also close any open tab regardless of where on that tab you click. This can also make closing down select tabs quite a bit quicker and simpler than hunting for each individual ‘X’ on the tab. Hopefully this quick little trick can, over time, help you be a bit quicker in your daily workflow.
