Ctrl+Tab MRU icon

Ctrl+Tab MRU

by Daniel Calliess

v0.9 Updated Oct 12, 2023 15.2KiB
CWS
2K
Users
★ 3.39
119 reviews
#14904
of 208.6K
workflow
#4128 of 32K
⚠️Not updated in over 2 years

Description

'Ctrl+Tab MRU' allows switching through tabs in the order they were visited before. By default this happens by pressing Ctrl+Y for going back in time and Ctrl+Shift+Y for the other way round. *** IMPORTANT TO KNOW *** Unfortunately Chrome doesn't drectly allow users to set Ctr+Tab as shortcut keys. So I suggest using the following trick to circumvent this: https://superuser.com/a/1326712. *** *** *** Tab switching also works on special pages (like chrome://), Chrome Web Store URLs, PDFs, XMLs or when the address bar is focused. In this case a temporary tab is opened to show the menu. To directly jump to a tab listed on the switcher menu, click on its title or icon. Drawbacks: - At the moment I don't have an idea how to avoid the temporary tab. It's required because I otherwise could not detect the release of the ctrl key (=end of the switching action) on special pages. - If you release the ctrl key too fast while the temporary tab is loaded I am unable to detect the key-up event, therefore the menu gets stuck. Please hit the ctrl key again to finish switching. - Recent tab order is not preserved when closing and restoring a window. Permissions: - 'Access your data on all websites': required to draw the tab list on top of the websites' content and to detect PDFs and XMLs. - 'Access your tabs and browsing activity': required to record tab order, open the temporary tab and to switch to the selected tab. Updates: - 0.9 -- switch to Manifest V3 to be future proof - 0.6 -- tab titles on the switcher popup are now clickable to directly jump to a tab -- no more need to reload the tabs after initial install -- added xml viewer support (menu is shown on temporary tab) - 0.5 -- added frameset support (menu is shown on temporary tab) - 0.4.2 -- added support for ftp and file:// pages -- added incognito support - 0.3.1 -- corrected tab order for tabs opened in the background -- refined stylesheet
Ctrl+Tab MRU screenshot 1Ctrl+Tab MRU screenshot 2

Reviews (35 cached)

★☆☆☆☆2025-09-19
YG ABCDries

2025.09.19.Fr.14.10. in my experience this "Ctrl+Tab MRU" extension doesn't work at all on Chromium for Windows.11.

★☆☆☆☆2019-03-25
Ree

no worky

★☆☆☆☆2018-07-11
Danni Webb

Doesn't work. Options greyed out.

★☆☆☆☆2018-01-02
Lorenz Pressler

does not work. inactive options.

★☆☆☆☆2017-04-15
starrychloe S.

Seems to work. Just using CTRL-Y instead. Ah, just stopped working!

★☆☆☆☆2017-04-05
Vitali Liubarski

doesn't work in chrom

★☆☆☆☆2016-10-06
Alexey Konkov

does not work

★☆☆☆☆2016-07-12
daniel sam

Does not work. Options inactive.

★☆☆☆☆2016-06-17
Adolf Healer

It't doesn't working at all :/.

★☆☆☆☆2016-05-15
Марк Теплов

does not work :(

★☆☆☆☆2015-12-23
Dio Phung

Ctrl + Tab is no longer bindable, i.e this extension no longer work. It should be removed from Chrome Extension library to help people from installing it and wondering how to customize Ctrl + Tab

★☆☆☆☆2015-12-07
Alexy G

Does not work

★☆☆☆☆2015-09-22
Vasco Duarte

Does not work on Mac

★☆☆☆☆2015-06-15
Jimmy Tompkins

already had. Stupid. hate it

★☆☆☆☆2014-11-15
Yoav Sapir

Not working at all. Just walks the tabs from left to right.

★☆☆☆☆2014-11-06
Scott Hanson

Doesn't work.

★☆☆☆☆2014-06-21
B Holmes

Thanks to the publisher, but can't set keyboard shortcut to ctrl+tab. I can't believe how blinkered and anti-user Google are being over this issue. It's like MRU switching wasn't a GUI default since Xerox invented them in the 70s.

★★☆☆☆2026-03-26
Арсений Абаканович

doesn't work witch ctrl tab

★★☆☆☆2024-09-30
aki play

unstable performance

★★☆☆☆2023-02-25
vania p.

doesnt workin on my mac

★★☆☆☆2018-01-10
Hugh Hyatt

Under too many circumstances, I don't have Ctrl-Tab access to most of my open tabs.

★★☆☆☆2015-05-05
Miha Pšenica

I can't get it to work correctly on Chromebook. As stated I can't set CRTL-Tab, but that's ok. I have tried CTRL-Q and it works for the last tab, but if I want to go back in history it opens a new tab with soft of a drop-down list of recent tabs that I can't even click on. I'll keep searching...

★★☆☆☆2014-11-18
Yaakov Dalsace

Does not work

★★☆☆☆2014-07-20
Wannes Rombouts

This is not working when the shortcut doesn't involve the ctrl key. (For example when using alt-x)

★★☆☆☆2014-03-04
Russell Montgomery

The product only worked one time. After that anytime I tried using Ctrl+Tab it just walked the tabs from left to right. The product should also work when closing tabs it should take you to the MRU tab.

★★☆☆☆2014-01-10
Flz Huang

dosen't work anymore... it's could be nice if it works

★★☆☆☆2013-12-01
Jeffrey Burke

Does not cycle between 'most recently used' (i.e. MRU) tabs. needs two different short cuts (one goes forward the other backward). Does not follow the pattern advertised by it's name.

★★☆☆☆2013-10-30
Nico C

when I click ctrl+tab too fast it doesn't work because it stays on that temporal windows you create to display the order. don't you can avoid that window?

★★★☆☆2024-03-14
Alex D

Works great. For ease of use I set my keyboard shortcuts to Ctrl + Q and Ctrl + Shift + Q. Also, enabled in Incognito and in file URLs. EDIT: Somehow, not all open tabs are listed in its menu. Have to downgrade my rating, unfortunately.

★★★☆☆2018-04-01
Sid Sen

There is an issue with this extension. At times it does not show all the open tabs when you press ctrl+q (or whatever is the shortcut). Then I have to manually restart the extension, after which it works for a while.

★★★☆☆2017-03-25
Duane Hutchins

This doesn't direct me to the most recent tab. It seems the order is close but not quite right.

★★★☆☆2016-04-29
Thomas Calame

Could actually change Ctrl + Tab behavior which was the reason I was not using Chrome thanks to Radek Zyka trick. Make sure you set the file Preferences to "read only" after the change it otherwise returns to default. Edit: Experiencing glitches with MRU order after a few days.

★★★☆☆2016-04-28
Andrew Meyer

Probably the best MRU tab switching extension currently available (though that's not really saying much). It seems there's quite a few limitations in Chrome that these extensions have to work around, and so far this extension seems to do the best job of handling those limitations in a graceful way. Unfortunately there's a lot of buggy behavior, with tab switching occasionally not working, and tabs sometimes being ignored by the extension entirely (see the support tab for my bug reports on those issues).

★★★☆☆2014-10-16
Andrey Borodulin

does not work :(

★★★☆☆2014-05-27
Andrej Telle

I cant input ctrl+tab in the keyboard shortcuts page. It just ignores it or if other tabs are open ignores it and jumpes to the next tab.

Permissions (3)

Permissions

scripting Can inject scripts into web pages storage Can store data locally in your browser tabs Can see your open tabs and their URLs

Details

Version 0.9
Updated Oct 12, 2023
Size 15.2KiB
First Seen Mar 26, 2026