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why firefox removed duplicate tab option?

  • 11 replies
  • 27 have this problem
  • 19 views
  • Last reply by RichUK

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till Firefox 3.6 (Which I still believe best version till date) had option of duplicate tab when you right click on tab. Now in newer versions they got rid of it.

Firefox, why you keep messing with right click menu? (you had to change order of "open a new tab" )

till Firefox 3.6 (Which I still believe best version till date) had option of duplicate tab when you right click on tab. Now in newer versions they got rid of it. Firefox, why you keep messing with right click menu? (you had to change order of "open a new tab" )

Modified by the-edmeister

Chosen solution

I agree that no version of Firefox had the "Duplicate tab" option.

You very much likely had a Tab related extension. Check the "Tools->Add-ons->Extensions" list as you could have a old version of some Tab related extension listed but disabled due to be old and not compatible with Firefox 8.0

For example, search for duplicate at addons.mozilla.org will give you a number of extensions that can duplicate tabs.

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All Replies (11)

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Firefox never had the feature to duplicate a tab via the right-click context menu.
If you had it then it was added by an extension.

You can duplicate a tab with a middle-click on the refresh button on the right end of location bar or you can Ctrl drag a tab to a new position to copy the tab.
In later Firefox versions you will have to press the Ctrl key if you want to bookmark a tab by dragging a on the Bookmarks Toolbar.


If you try to open the same URL in more than one tab then you may have the "Switch to Tab" feature preventing that.

  • Press the Shift key while an entry in the drop down list is highlighted to disable "Switch to Tab" and see the URL.
  • Use the cursor Right key to select an item marked as Switch to Tab in the drop down list and copy the URL to the location bar.
  • Open the URL in a new tab by using Alt + Enter on the highlighted entry.
  • Open the URL in the current tab by using Shift + Enter on the highlighted entry.

See also:

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Chosen Solution

I agree that no version of Firefox had the "Duplicate tab" option.

You very much likely had a Tab related extension. Check the "Tools->Add-ons->Extensions" list as you could have a old version of some Tab related extension listed but disabled due to be old and not compatible with Firefox 8.0

For example, search for duplicate at addons.mozilla.org will give you a number of extensions that can duplicate tabs.

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I realized later firefox 3.6 didn't have duplicate tab. Must have confused firefox with other browser. Thanks for your answer guys.

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I had been using Taberwocky but its no longer supported and disabled. I want a "duplicate tab" context menu entry when I right click on a tab. How do I add this? No I'm not happy with all the other ways Firefox does it. They're all cumbersome and hard to remember.

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What is so hard to remember about a middle-click on the refresh button to duplicate the current tab?

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I admit there are different ways to do that but those are very unusual(how many browser have this command to middle click on refresh button to clone tab? and my laptop doesn't have middle click button too).

Sure different browser have different shortcuts for some specific tasks but what I'm suggesting is all browser should have same shortcut for day to day browsing, and they do have for most of time like new tab in almost all browser is ctrl+T and so on.

I don't think this should be very hard for Mozilla team to add this one shortcut in right click menu of tab.(and they should consider about it when people have to go through all extension and hassle just to duplicate tab)

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If you do not have a scroll wheel to do the middle-click action with then there is another way which is "Ctrl+Left Click"

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Middle Click? I only have left and right.

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There is usually a way to simulate a middle-click by pressing the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously.
If that doesn't work then use a Ctrl and left-click instead as posted above by James.

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Well, my Firefox 8 to 9 had duplicate tab on the right click menu and I certainly didn't consciously install an extension for it. My computer suffered a catastrophic crash and, after a clean install of windows 7, I downloaded Firefox to find it is version 10 and no duplicate tab function.

Your answers are all very fine as work arounds but they do not answer the quetsion of why was it dropped. Chrome has duplicate tab as a function so it seems a retrograde step.

Chrome would be a good substitue but Browser History is not a patch on Firefox.

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I was a long time Flock user, after Netscape, and although I had Firefox installed on a number of computers, it was a long time before I switched to it as my main browser, even after Flock was discontinued. This was mainly because of the Tab behaviours.

I have always wanted to browse opening links in new tabs, normally by right clicking a link and choosing "Open in Link in New Tab" or similar option. This was fine, except where a page uses buttons with JavaScript, etc to open the new link, with no right-click context menu available.

Now, I know that these days you can force links to open in new tabs, but I preferred to duplicate the current tab, then click the button, in those cases. The whole point of this is to keep the existing "parent" page open in a tab, whist viewing the "child" (linked page) in a new tab - when that tab is then closed, you are back at the "parent" page again.

For a long time I did this using the NewTabURL addon, in Netscape, then Flock, with the option set to open a new tab as a duplicate of the current page. Having switched to Firefox, I found that this no long did what I wanted due to the New Tab page used (so I have now removed it).

Well my solution was to install the Tab Utilities addon and set the Tab Opening options to Focus new tabs from everything except "None" (including Duplicate Tab). When I right-click an existing tab I now have these options:


  • New Tab (T underlined - opens the standard Firefox new tab page like click the +)
  • Duplicate Tab Ctrl+Alt+T (D underlined - duplicates the tab like I want it to!)

(followed by Reload Tab and the other normal items)

I am a very happy bunny now, as I have both the new Firefox tab page available, whilst still being able to Duplicate a tab in the way I want as well. I am also very happy to be using Firefox Sync to sync my Firefox browsers on different machines and also the excellent Mercury browser on my iPad (saved me having to keep importing bookmarks into Safari).

So if you like to browse just using the mouse, like me, I hope you find this useful.

Just a shame that Firefox did not think to include a Duplicate Tab item to the Tab Context Menu by default, as I am sure a lot of other users would like that functionality, and it is available on some competitor browsers.

Modified by RichUK