Which browsers can Flick search tabs in?

Supported browsers

Browser tabs come with a Flick license. Each browser stays off until you turn it on in Settings › Browser Tabs, and macOS then asks you once whether Flick may control it. Search your browser tabs walks through it.

Flick recognizes each browser by its app's identifier, not its name, so another release channel is never mistaken for one of these, even if you rename it. Settings › Browser Tabs lists only the supported browsers installed on your Mac, in the order above. If none is installed, it says “No supported browser is installed”.

Not supported

Flick 1.1 doesn't read tabs in:

• Other browsers, including Firefox, Arc, Opera, Vivaldi, Orion, Zen, Dia, Comet and Helium.
• Other channels of a supported browser: Chrome Canary and Chrome Dev; Edge Beta, Dev and Canary; Brave Beta and Brave Nightly; and Safari Technology Preview. Their names look like a supported browser's, but each is an app of its own, so turning on Chrome, Edge, Brave or Safari doesn't cover them.

Their windows are still in your list, as the next section explains. Using Firefox? See finding a tab in Firefox. Flick doesn't close, move or reorder tabs in any browser, supported or not. It finds a tab and switches to it.

Windows of any browser are still listed

Flick's window list doesn't depend on browser tabs. Every standard window of an app with a Dock icon that macOS reports to Flick gets its own row, so Firefox, Arc, Chrome Canary and the rest are in your list like any other app, in the free version too. Search finds those windows by the app's name and the window's title, and many browsers title a window after the page it's showing, so typing part of a page's name can find its window.

What's missing is the tab level: no tab count on the row, no list of tabs behind →, and no search results for single tabs. A supported browser behaves the same way until you turn it on.

Finding a tab in Firefox

Because Flick sees a Firefox window but not its tabs, a window is found only by the tab it's showing: a tab behind it won't match until it's in front. So the two split the work. Flick takes you to the right Firefox window from any app or Desktop, and Firefox finds the tab inside it. Mozilla describes two ways:

• From the tab list. Click the List all tabs button at the end of the tab strip (with vertical tabs on, it's in the toolbar), then click Search All Tabs and type.
• From the address bar. Type % before or after your search, and the suggestions show only open tabs.

Flick has no special handling for Firefox's private windows: they're listed with their titles like any other Firefox window, and Include private windows changes nothing for Firefox. To keep Firefox out of Flick, you can ignore the app, but that hides every Firefox window, private or not.

Installed web apps

If you install a site as an app from Chrome, Chrome Beta, Brave or Edge, Flick treats it as an app of its own, not as a browser window. When it reads the browser's tabs it skips web-app windows, so a web app's page never shows up as a browser tab in search and isn't counted in any browser window's tabs.

Like any other app, a web app appears in Flick's list only if macOS reports its windows to Flick. If one you expect isn't there, Find a missing window covers each reason a window can be left out.

Questions