This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox sporadically moves my current tab to a new window.

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser
more options

About 2-3 times per week, I'll be browsing with multiple tabs open, and Firefox will suddenly "close" my current tab and re-open it in a new window. I say "close" because the tab is not listed under "Recently Closed Tabs." Rather, Firefox seems to just move the tab to a new window.

I thought maybe there was a keyboard shortcut for this that I was accidentally hitting, but I can't find what the shortcut for that would be. Did I just miss it?

The site I'm visiting doesn't seem to matter, as it's happened with different sites, including my webmail service, Google, and Facebook. The number of tabs open doesn't seem to matter either, as it's happened with 50+ tabs and just now happened with 24 tabs (which is low for me).

This happened

A few times a week

About a month or so ago

User Agent

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

About 2-3 times per week, I'll be browsing with multiple tabs open, and Firefox will suddenly "close" my current tab and re-open it in a new window. I say "close" because the tab is not listed under "Recently Closed Tabs." Rather, Firefox seems to just move the tab to a new window. I thought maybe there was a keyboard shortcut for this that I was accidentally hitting, but I can't find what the shortcut for that would be. Did I just miss it? The site I'm visiting doesn't seem to matter, as it's happened with different sites, including my webmail service, Google, and Facebook. The number of tabs open doesn't seem to matter either, as it's happened with 50+ tabs and just now happened with 24 tabs (which is low for me). == This happened == A few times a week == About a month or so ago == == User Agent == Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

All Replies (3)

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser Question owner
more options

If you move the pointer down as you click you're effectively dragging the tab out of the bar so Firefox activates the "detach tab" which opens it in a new window.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Firefox 3.5/6 versions have a feature called tear-off tabs. You can detach a tab from the current window and open it in a new window by dragging a tab in the browser window. You can drag that tab back to the tab bar in the original window to undo that detaching.

bug489729 (Disable detach and tear off tab): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/12276

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser Question owner
more options

Thanks, this was exactly my problem.