Faced with a host of tabs in Safari and want to close almost all of them? Find out here how to close multiple tabs without going to each one individually in Safari on a Mac.
First, This Is How Far We Will Go
One hour is the time people will spend on the move every day, even when they have nowhere to go in particular.
This is one conclusion Cesare Marchetti famously drew from Yaʻaḳov Zehavi’s Unified Mechanism of Travel Model (UMOT) project research of traveling behavior. When he applied that hour to the size of settlements, he found cities grew with the speed of transport—to a size that allowed for about half an hour of travel from the periphery to the center, but no larger.
The all too common half-hour commute with its consequences on agglomerations is known as Marchetti’s constant.
Bearing that in mind, want to cover the distance of half an hour’s worth of opening tabs in about a constant time of—seconds?
How to Close Multiple Tabs Fast in Safari on a Mac
Closing Select Safari Tabs
Time needed: 1 minute
To close more than one tab in a single action in Safari for macOS on a Mac:
- Go to one of the tabs you want to close.
Here’s why: If you close select tabs, the currently visible one will always be one of them; you can also close other tabs, of course—see below.
- Hold Command while you click other tab titles to add them to the selection.
Tab bar: If you do not see the Safari tab bar in full screen view, move the mouse to the top of the screen until it appears.
Range: You can also hold Shift and click to select a range of tabs.
Negating: Press and highlighted tab while holding Command to remove it from the selection. - Click on one of the highlighted tabs with the right mouse button.
- Select Close Tabs from the context menu.
macOS keyboard shortcut: You can also press Command W.
Closing Other Tabs
To close (all) other tabs in a Safari window on a Mac:
- Click with the right mouse button on the title of the tab you want to keep.
- Select Close Other Tabs from the context menu that has appeared.
Safari keyboard shortcut: You can also go to the tab you want to keep and press Command Option W.
To close all but a select group of tabs (especially useful if you have opened a host of tabs from one source tab you’d like to keep):
- Assemble all tabs you want to keep to the left of the tab bar.
Drag and drop: You can rearrange tabs using dragging and dropping.
Sort: Select Window | Arrange Tabs By | Title or Window | Arrange Tabs By | Website to have Safari sort tabs in the current window by page title or domain respectively. - Now click on the rightmost tab you want to keep in the tab bar with the right mouse button.
- Select Close Tabs to the Right from the context menu that has shown.
Left: If you click on the rightmost tab, you can select Close Tabs to the Left instead to close all other tabs in the window.
Closing All Tabs
You can, of course, also close all tabs in one go in Mac Safari.
How to Close Multiple Tabs Fast in Safari on a Mac: FAQ
Can I also close multiple tabs from the tab overview?
No.
While the Safari tab overview lets you close individual tabs, you cannot select and close more than one at a time.
(How to close multiple tabs fast in Safari on a Mac tested with macOS Sonoma 14.3; updated February 2024)