How to Switch Tabs in Google Chrome Using Keyboard

Last Updated on October 2, 2020 by Roshan Parihar

Everytime you work on your computer, while browsing some websites on your browser, you always think of how to switch tabs fastly using shortcut key. You can switch tabs using your mouse but it needs some effort to move from your keyboard to mouse.

So, what are the different ways to move from one tab to another tab in Google Chrome browser? Can you move back to the tabs in Google Chrome?

The answer is – yes there are 3 different ways given here you can use to move from one tab to another and move back to the tab of your choice.

I will not take more time to give you the shortcuts, so let’s start learning new shortcuts.

1. Switch Tabs Using Ctrl and Tab keys

This is the first method where you have to press the Ctrl and Tab keys to switch tabs and move from one tab to another. But there are different ways to move forward and backward to Google Chrome browser tabs.

Let’s see what are the ways to move forward and backward using the Ctrl and Tab keys.

Using Ctrl+Tab: Move forward
You can switch tabs in forwarding direction from one tab to another using the ctrl and tab keyboard shortcut. Press this keyboard shortcut when you have opened many tabs in Google Chrome and move from tabs.

The shortcut moves you from one tab to another in a sequential manner.

If you are at the end of the tabs, the shortcut will take you to the starting of the tabs in Google Chrome.

Using Ctrl+Shift+Tab: Move backward
By using this shortcut you can move back to the previously opened tab. You just need to press one more additional key other than the Ctrl and Tab keys.

If you are at the start of the tab, it will take you to the end immediately on pressing of the key. After it takes you to the end it starts moving backward direction in the browser.

Switch Tabs Using Ctrl and pgup or ctrl and pgdn keys

This is another way of moving from one tab to another tab by pressing two keyboard button’s only. In the previous method, you need to press three keyboard button’s to move in the backward direction. But this shortcut method needs only two button’s everytime you want to move back and forth between the Browser tabs.

Using Ctrl+pgup: Move forward
You can switch from one tab to another tab in the forward direction using the Ctrl+pgup keyboard shortcut.

If you are at the end of the browser tab, the shortcut will take you to the start of the tabs. The action performs immediately on key press. After moving from end to the start, it works same and moves in the forward direction.

Using Ctrl+pgdn: Move backward
It needs only two keys to press and move in the backward and switch tabs in the browser.The shortcut will send you to the end of all the tabs when the current position of the tab is the first position.

Switch to Specific Tabs Using Ctrl and Numeric keys

By Using all the above shortcut methods, you cannot move from the first tab to the fifth tab or from the fourth tab to the second tab. However, you can move from the start to the end and from the end to the start only if you are at the various end positions of the tabs of your browser.
Using Ctrl+numeric key

If you want to switch tabs to the specified position of the browser, you can do so by using the Ctrl+numeric keys. Suppose if you want to move from the first position to the third position, you can press Ctrl+3 to perform this task. This is the fastest keyboard shortcut you should know to move to the specified position of browser tabs.