The middle mouse button contains multitudes. It can do a lot of things in nearly any web browser. So give your index finger a stretch, and get ready to click that scroll wheel. I’m going to teach you five quick tricks to put that middle mouse button to good use.
First, a heads-up: on some mice—especially mice with a lot of buttons—the middle mouse button may actually be a different button located near the scroll wheel. If clicking down on your mouse’s wheel doesn’t work like you’d expect, try another nearby button instead.
1. Open a link in a new tab
To open a link on a web page in a new tab, just middle-click it rather than left-clicking it. That’ll cause it to open right up in a new browser tab—in the background.
To open a link in a new browser tab and immediately switch to it, meanwhile, hold the Shift key while you middle-click the link.
(If you’re more of a one-hand-on-the-keyboard kind of person, you can also do this with the good ol’ left mouse button. Just hold down the Ctrl key while you left-click a link to open it in a new tab.)
2. Launch a folder of bookmarks in a single click
The middle mouse button works with bookmarks, too: just middle-click a bookmark to open it in a new tab. It’s especially convenient if you have your browser’s bookmarks bar visible.
This even works with bookmark folders: middle-click a folder of bookmarks to open them all at once. This lets you accomplish in one click what would typically take two.
3. Close a browser tab
The middle mouse button is also a convenient way to close browser tabs. Position your mouse cursor over a tab on your browser’s tab bar, and middle-click it. The tab will vanish.
Want the tab back? You can re-open a closed tab by right-clicking an empty spot on your browser’s tab bar and using the Reopen closed tab option.
If you prefer the keyboard path, you can also press Ctrl+W to close the current tab. But the middle mouse button will let you fly through closing an entire series of tabs—without having to hunt down the X button on each one.
4. Open the previous or next page in a new tab
You can middle-click your web browser’s back or forward arrow buttons on the toolbar, and your browser will open the previous or next page—from that specific tab’s browsing history—in a new tab.
As a bonus, your web browser will even duplicate that tab’s entire history and bring it over into the new tab that’s being opened. That means even in that new tab, you can keep using the back and forward buttons to move through the same history you had in the original tab.
5. Duplicate the current tab
Last but not least: you can create a duplicate copy of your current tab with the middle-mouse button. Just middle-click the Refresh button on your web browser’s navigation bar to make it happen.
This copy of the current tab comes complete with a copy of the tab’s browsing history, too—just like with middle-clicking the back or forward buttons.
Next: Go beyond the browser
Many of these tricks work in other apps, too—including the Windows 11 tab-filled File Explorer. (Sorry, Windows 10 users: tabs are one of the new features File Explorer gained in the upgrade to Windows 11.) In File Explorer on Windows 11, you can middle-click a folder to open it in a new tab or middle-click a tab to close it.
That middle button may sometimes seem useless, but now you know: it can speed things up.
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