How to search your open tabs in Safari on a Mac

Safari has two built-in ways to find a tab you already have open: the tab overview, which shows the window's tabs as thumbnails and has its own search, and the Smart Search field, which spots a site you have open as you type its address. Both are covered below for Safari 27, the current version on macOS 15 Sequoia, macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27, and for Safari 26, the newest version for macOS 14 Sonoma, along with where each one stops.

Tab overview and its search

1. Open the tab overview

   Press ⇧⌘\, or choose View › Show Tab Overview. The window's tabs appear as thumbnails.

2. Search

   Click the Search Tabs field in the overview and type a word from the page you're after.

3. Open the tab

   Click its thumbnail. To leave the overview without switching, press ⇧⌘\ again.

⇧⌘\ is “Show tab overview” in Apple's Safari keyboard shortcuts, in the guides for both Safari 26 and Safari 27. Apple's guide doesn't describe the search field, so we checked Safari 26.2 on macOS 26.2: the overview has a field labeled Search Tabs, and the same ⇧⌘\ is listed in the View menu to hide the overview again.

Every Safari tab key, and Chrome's, Finder's and Terminal's, is in keyboard shortcuts to switch tabs on a Mac.

Switch to a tab from the Smart Search field

The Smart Search field is the address bar at the top of the window. It notices when you type the address or name of a page you already have open:

1. Go to the Smart Search field

   Click it, or press ⌘L.

2. Start typing the address or the page's name

   If you already have that page open in a tab, in this window or another, it appears below Switch to Tab in the suggestions.

3. Choose it

   Safari takes you to the tab you have instead of opening a second one.

That's Apple's method for keeping a site to one tab, in Prevent or create duplicate tabs. Apple's steps start from the address, and its page on tabs from your other devices says typing part of a page's name works too. Apple doesn't say whether it reaches your other windows, so we checked Safari 26.2 on macOS 26.2: a word that was only in a page's title, typed in a second window, listed the tab from the first window under Switch to Tab. We tried two ordinary windows, not private windows or windows of another profile.

Tab groups and profiles

Safari can keep tabs apart in two ways, and both decide what you'll find when you search.

Tab Groups are named sets of tabs you open in a window. A window shows one group's tabs at a time, so open the group first: click the down arrow next to the Sidebar button in the toolbar and choose it, or click it in the sidebar. To see a group's sites as thumbnails, Control-click the group in the sidebar and choose Show Tab Overview, then search there (Group tabs in Safari).

Profiles keep your browsing for work, school and home apart, and each profile has its own tabs, history and website data. A profile's tabs are in its own windows: to open one, choose File › New Window › New [profile name] Window, then search from that window (Create profiles in Safari).

Safari 27 on macOS 27 adds topics. With Apple Intelligence, Safari can group related tabs into topics for you. Choose Safari › Settings › Tabs and set Organize tabs to Automatically Create Topics, Show Related Tabs, or Never. A topic sits in the tab row with the number of tabs in it: hold the pointer over it to preview its tabs, and click it to open or collapse them. Apple Intelligence isn't available in every language or region (Change Tabs settings).

Searching across windows

The tab overview covers one window, but Switch to Tab in the Smart Search field also finds tabs in your other Safari windows. Four ways to reach a tab in another window:

• Use Switch to Tab. In any Safari window, press ⌘L and type part of the tab's address or title. A matching tab from another window is listed under Switch to Tab (see above). It finds a tab you can name; it doesn't show you all of them.
• Merge the windows. Choose Window › Merge All Windows to turn all your open Safari windows into tabs in one window (Arrange tabs in Safari). Then the tab overview and its search cover everything. Tabs in private windows only move to other private windows, so those stay apart.
• Pick the window first. The Window menu lists your open Safari windows by name; choose one, then search its tabs.
• Switch windows from the keyboard. ⌘` switches between the windows of the app you're using (Mac keyboard shortcuts), so with Safari in front it steps through Safari's windows. Its limits are in how to switch between windows of the same app.

Chrome has its own tab search that lists the tabs of all its windows in one profile together: see how to search your open tabs in Chrome.

With Flick

With a license, Flick searches the tabs of every Safari window at once, on every Desktop: hold ⌥, tap Tab and type a few letters of a tab's title or address. Each matching tab gets a row of its own; let go, and Safari comes forward on that tab. The same search covers Google Chrome, Chrome Beta, Brave and Microsoft Edge, if you turn them on.

There's one catch, and it comes from Safari: Flick reads Safari's tabs only while Include private windows is on in its Settings › Browser Tabs, which includes the other browsers' private windows too (why Safari needs it). macOS asks once whether Flick may control Safari, and Flick keeps only each tab's title and address, in memory. The free version lists your 5 most recent windows, Safari's included, but not their tabs.

See how Flick works with Safari, or read about browser tab search in Flick.