Firefox tip: closing tabs with middle-click on Linux

In Firefox, on Windows, it’s quite useful to be able to close tabs by middle-clicking on them. But on Linux, by default, what middle-click does (either on the tab or on the main page display) is to open whatever is on the clipboard in the current tab.

But you may prefer middle-click to work as in the Windows version. If so, just open about:config, then search for

middlemouse.contentLoadURL

and change it to False. Simple as that.

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6 Responses to “Firefox tip: closing tabs with middle-click on Linux”


  1. 1 jure

    this is not what I wanted. Now when I select some text and middle click it it won’t open! It’s not good, almost as bad as on some machines when your mouse changes into somekind of arrow pointing in all the directions and moves the page where you move your mouse.

  2. 2 maskd

    When i middle click on tabs it closes that tab…… ubuntu 6.06 here.

    I use the middle click excessively when browing, i open all my links with the middle mouse button and always close tabs with the middle mouse button, it’s great. I’ve also found double clicking on space next to tabs will open a new one

  3. 3 jure

    maskd: do you have any extensions that could have made it work like this?

  4. 4 Arla

    Thank you very much for sharing this information. When I middle clicked tabs and they just opened some random url (or so it seemed to me), I hadn’t got a clue what was going on ^^

    Now I also know about the about:config, Yay!

  5. 5 Moe

    my mouse middle click was working fine and then it went away. I can’t close tabs by using it and I definitely can’t get ‘new’ tabs from links by using it either. How do I get to about:config? or better yet, is there someting simpler to do?

    Reinstallation didn’t work unfortunately. Thank you.

  6. 6 Pedro Timóteo

    [quote post="348"]How do I get to about:config?[/quote]

    Simply type it in the address bar and press Enter.

  1. 1 Fixing tab annoyances in Firefox 2.0 at The Tlog

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal