Tabs

Tabs hold your open pages. By default they run along the top of the window. You can move them into a sidebar instead. This page covers opening, switching, arranging, pinning, muting, renaming and closing tabs, and the settings that change how they behave.

Open a tab

• Press Ctrl+T.
• Choose the + button after the last tab, or the New tab row at the top of the sidebar.
• Open the Acira menu and choose New tab.
• Right-click a tab and choose New tab to the right (New tab below with tabs in a sidebar).
• Right-click an empty part of the tab strip. The menu has New tab, New private tab and New Tor tab.
• Right-click a link and choose Open link in new tab, or Open link and switch to tab.

A link that opens in a new tab with Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on a Mac) or a middle click opens behind the tab you are on. Turn on Settings › Tabs › Open new tabs in front and such a link switches to the new tab instead. It is off by default.

You can also open a private tab (Ctrl+Shift+P) or a Tor tab. To open a tab in its own window, right-click it and choose Move to new window.

Switch between tabs

On a Mac, use Cmd in place of Ctrl, except for Ctrl+Tab, which stays Ctrl+Tab. With more than one workspace, these keys act on the tabs of the open workspace. Tab groups that are collapsed are skipped.

With tabs in a sidebar, hold Ctrl by itself (Cmd on a Mac) for about a quarter of a second and each tab row shows its number, where the close button sits. From the tenth tab on, the number has two digits. The numbers go when you let go, press another key, turn the wheel over the page or leave the window. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+8 go to tabs 1 to 8, and Ctrl+9 goes to the last tab. If you gave those keys to another command, no number shows. A tab that lives only in a Favorite's tile (when Favorites' tabs in the tab list is off) has no number and is skipped by these keys. See Sidebar.

Go to tab 10 and beyond

Keep Ctrl down (Cmd on a Mac) and press the two digits of the number, one after the other. 1 then 5 goes to tab 15. This reaches tabs 10 to 99, with tabs along the top or in a sidebar. Only the sidebar shows the numbers.

• Press the second digit within 1.5 seconds of the first. Zero is a digit too: 1 then 0 goes to tab 10. If no tab has the number you typed, nothing happens.
• A first digit waits only when there is a tab it could lead to. With 12 tabs, only 1 waits, for tabs 10 to 12. With 9 tabs or fewer, nothing waits and each number key goes to its tab at once.
• If you wait longer than 1.5 seconds, let go of Ctrl or press another key, the first digit goes to its own tab, so Ctrl+1 still ends at tab 1. Esc drops the digit instead.
• With tabs in a sidebar, the numbers that begin with the digit you pressed stay strong while the others fade.
• Ctrl+9 is still the last tab, so once you have ten tabs the ninth has no number of its own.

What Ctrl+Tab does

Choose in Settings › Tabs › Switching tabs › Ctrl+Tab switches to. The default is Next tab.

All open tabs

Press Alt+T or Ctrl+Shift+A, or use the tab viewer button in the toolbar (All open tabs). A panel lists every tab in the open workspace, with pinned tabs first. Type to filter by title, address or group name. With more than one workspace, matches from the other workspaces are listed under In {name}, and choosing one switches there. The button New tab sits at the foot.

• Use the arrow keys, Home and End to move, Enter to switch, Ctrl+W to close the highlighted tab and Esc to leave.
• If nothing matches, it says No tabs match your search.

Right-click menu of a tab

Right-click a tab (or press Shift+F10 or the Menu key on a focused tab) to open its menu.

Arrange tabs

• Drag a tab to a new place in the strip or the sidebar list.
• With a tab focused in the strip, hold Alt and press an arrow key. In the sidebar, press Alt+Shift+Up or Alt+Shift+Down.
• Ctrl+Shift+PageUp and Ctrl+Shift+PageDown (Move tab left, Move tab right) move the current tab.
• Drag a tab down onto the page to start a split view.
• Drop a tab on a tab group header to put it in the group.
• In the sidebar, drag a tab, a split view or a group header onto a workspace icon to move it to that workspace. See Workspaces.

Pin a tab

Right-click a tab and choose Pin tab. Pinned tabs sit at the start of the strip or in the Pinned tabs section of the sidebar. They never go to sleep. A pinned tab cannot be in a tab group: pinning removes it from its group, and putting a pinned tab in a group unpins it. In the sidebar, a pinned tab has no close button, so unpin it first. Pin or unpin tab has no default key. You can give it one in Settings › Shortcuts.

Rename a tab

Press F2 on a focused tab, double-click a tab in the sidebar, or choose Rename tab. Type a name and press Enter. The name is yours, and it stays when the page title changes.

Mute a tab

Choose Mute tab in the tab menu, or press Ctrl+M (Mute or unmute tab, Windows only. On a Mac this command has no default key). A tab that plays sound shows a small level meter where the close button sits. A muted tab keeps a speaker-off button you click to unmute. For per-tab volume, see Sound and per-tab volume.

Close and reopen tabs

• Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 closes the current tab. Ctrl+Shift+W closes the window.
• Middle-click a tab to close it. In the sidebar, press Delete on a focused tab.
• Closing a tab shows Tab closed with Undo. Tabs you close within a second and a half of each other, or as a group, share one Undo message, such as 3 tabs closed.
• Ctrl+Shift+T brings back one tab: the newest you closed, in its old place, group and split. Acira keeps the last 50 closed tabs for this. Rewind keeps more, for longer.
• A page with unsaved changes is never closed without asking. Acira shows Leave without saving? with the sites named, and the buttons Close anyway and Keep editing.
• Closing Acira with two or more tabs open asks Close Acira? and says how many tabs are open in how many windows, with the buttons Close Acira and Cancel. This is on by default. Turn it off in Settings › Tabs › Ask before closing the browser, or choose Don't ask again in the card. The shortcut for Close Acira is Ctrl+Shift+Q (Windows only).

Tab sleep

Tabs you have not looked at for a while can sleep to free memory. A sleeping tab stays in your list and reloads where you left off when you open it.

Subdomains of a site you list stay awake too. Some sites always stay awake: calls, chat and music sites such as Meet, Zoom, Teams, Discord and Spotify. A tab never sleeps while it plays sound, uses the camera, microphone or screen, downloads, is pinned, is shown in a split view, is allowed to send notifications, or holds unsaved form input. A private tab stays awake. When your computer is short of memory, Acira lets long-idle tabs sleep sooner.

Put tabs to sleep yourself

You do not have to wait for the timer. Right-click a tab and choose Put to sleep. The menu of a tab group has Put group to sleep, and the menu of a workspace has Put workspace to sleep. A message says how many tabs went to sleep, for example 3 tabs put to sleep, and how many stayed awake.

• These work even when Put unused tabs to sleep is off. That switch only controls the automatic sleep.
• The same protections apply as for the automatic sleep. A tab that plays sound, uses the camera, microphone or screen, downloads, is allowed to send notifications, holds unsaved form input or is on your never-sleep list stays awake, and the message says why, for example This tab is playing or recording, so it stays awake.
• The tab you are on, the panes of a split view that are on screen, pinned tabs, private and Tor tabs, tabs in a locked workspace, Acira's own pages and tabs that are already asleep are left out. A row is shown only when at least one tab can go to sleep.

A sleeping tab looks dimmer than an awake one: its icon and its title are quieter, in the tab strip and in the sidebar. It looks normal again when you point at it, move to it with the keyboard or open it. A group whose tabs are all asleep looks dimmer too.

Tab previews and titles

A tab that is loading shows a small moving dot pattern in place of its icon. A private tab has a teal tint and a mask icon. A Tor tab has a purple tint and an onion icon.

Limits

• Private and Tor tabs cannot be pinned, grouped or moved to another window.
• The closed-tab list keeps 50 tabs for Ctrl+Shift+T. Private and Tor tabs closed in a window are remembered only in that window, in memory.
• The tab strip scrolls when it is full. Use Scroll tabs left and Scroll tabs right, or Alt+T.

Last updated November 8, 2026