How to switch between browser windows on Mac (Chrome, Safari, and the rest)
Five Chrome windows. Twenty tabs in each. One of them has the ticket you were reading four minutes ago, and you press Cmd-Tab — which takes you to "Chrome" and puts you on whichever window happened to be in front last. Browsers are the worst case for macOS window switching, because they're the app you're most likely to have six of. Here's how to switch between browser windows on Mac properly, starting with what's already on your keyboard.
The built-in shortcut: Command-backtick
With any browser focused, hold ⌘ and tap ` — the
key above Tab on a US layout — to move to that app's next window. Add
Shift (⌘⇧` ) to go back the other way. It's a system-level shortcut,
listed in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Keyboard as
"Move focus to next window", and you can rebind it there if the
backtick key is awkward on your layout.
The other native option is the Window menu. Every Mac app lists its
open windows at the bottom of that menu, so if you know the page title
you're after, Window → pick it is reliable even when the shortcut
isn't. Slow, but it never guesses wrong.
Are you looking for a window, or a tab?
Half the time the thing you actually want is a tab inside a window you already have open, and the tab shortcuts are much better than the window ones:
| What you want | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Next / previous tab | ⌃⇥ / ⌃⇧⇥ (or ⌘⌥→ / ⌘⌥←) |
| Jump to tab 1–8 | ⌘1 … ⌘8 |
| Jump to the last tab | ⌘9 |
| Search your tabs (Chrome) | ⇧⌘A |
| See every tab at once (Safari) | ⇧⌘\ — Show Tab Overview |
Chrome's Tab Search and Safari's Tab Overview are genuinely good, and worth the muscle memory. But note what they are: tab finders. Neither one moves you between browser windows, and neither one helps at all when the thing you want is the Slack window sitting behind the browser.
Where Command-backtick gives up
For two or three windows, ⌘`` is all you need. The cracks show up at
the volume browsers actually reach:
- It skips minimized windows. If you minimized a Chrome window to the Dock, backtick will cycle right past it forever. You have to click it in the Dock or find it in the Window menu.
- You're cycling blind. There's no overlay, no preview, no titles — just windows flicking past. With six near-identical browser windows, "tap and check, tap and check" is the whole experience.
- It can stop responding. The shortcut is known to go dead after you've used Cmd-Tab, particularly after cycling backward; triggering Mission Control usually resets it. Stage Manager has also been reported to interfere with it.
- The key isn't always above Tab. On many non-US layouts backtick lives somewhere else entirely, and the shortcut's one virtue — that it's easy to reach — goes with it.
- It's per-app. Backtick only ever cycles the focused app's windows. Getting from a Chrome window to a Safari window is Cmd-Tab first, backtick second.
Or just have fewer windows
Worth saying before reaching for tooling: a lot of browser-window sprawl
is accidental, and macOS has a one-click cure. In Safari, choose
Window → Merge All Windows and every open window collapses into
tabs in one window. Finder, Mail and Notes have the same command. If you
want it on a shortcut, System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts →
App Shortcuts lets you assign one to the exact menu title.
Chrome has no equivalent built in. You can drag tabs from one window into another's tab bar, or install one of the several "merge windows" extensions, but there's no native menu item. Worth knowing before you go hunting for it.
The keyboard-first fix: switch by recency, with a preview
The real problem isn't the browser — it's that macOS's window switching is app-first. Cmd-Tab thinks in apps, backtick thinks in one app at a time, and the window you want is usually "the one I was just in," which neither of them models.
That's the gap Let's Switch fills. Hold ⌥ and tap ⇥ and you get an overlay of every open window — across apps and across monitors — in most-recently-used order, with a live preview of each one. The window you were in four minutes ago is two taps away, and you can see it before you commit. Scoped to one app, hold ⌥ and tap ` to step through just that app's windows: the backtick move, but with an overlay you can actually read. Both of those are free, permanently.
When six windows is too many to flip through at all, Pro adds a search palette: ⌥ Space, type three letters of the page title, hit Return. Press it again and the same palette launches apps. Pro is $9.99, paid once, with a key good for up to 20 devices — no account, no subscription, no telemetry.
Two honest caveats: Let's Switch works within your current Space, so it won't reach a window parked on another desktop, and it needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
⌘`` (built-in) | Chrome Tab Search | Let's Switch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moves between windows | Yes, one app | No (tabs) | Yes, all apps |
| Shows you what you're picking | No | Yes, as a list | Yes, live previews |
| Includes minimized windows | No | n/a | Yes |
| Reaches other monitors | Often no | n/a | Yes |
| Ordered by recency | No | No | Yes |
| Price | Free | Free | Free tier; Pro pays once |
If backtick already gets you where you're going, keep it — it costs nothing. The switch is worth making when you notice you're tapping it four or five times per hop.
Frequently asked questions
What's the shortcut to switch between Chrome windows on Mac?
Command-backtick (⌘` ) with Chrome focused, and ⌘⇧` to go the
other way. It cycles Chrome's open windows but skips any you've
minimized.
Why doesn't Cmd-Tab switch between my browser windows? Cmd-Tab is an app switcher. It brings Chrome forward and shows whatever window was frontmost — it has no concept of the other five. For windows you need backtick, the Window menu, or a window switcher.
How do I merge all my browser windows into one?
In Safari, Window → Merge All Windows. Chrome has no built-in version;
drag tabs between windows or use an extension.
How do I get to a specific tab quickly?
⇧⌘A in Chrome opens Tab Search; ⇧⌘\ in Safari shows the tab overview.
Both search tabs, not windows.
Is there a way to switch to the window I was just in? Not natively — macOS doesn't expose a most-recently-used window list. That's what an MRU switcher like Let's Switch adds; there's more on the wider keyboard-only approach on the blog, and Let's Tile handles the other half of the job, putting windows where you want them once you're there.