How To: Always Open Links in New Tabs with Safari 4 [Mac]

Safari 4 Beta for Mac annoyingly doesn't always open links in tabs, and there's no real preference control to set this like there is in other browsers like Firefox or Opera. Apparently, this characteristic has been floating around in prior versions of the browser, too. While I like Safari's speediness and mildly dislike the new tab placement in the beta, what bugs me the most is the issue I indicated with the title of this post.

While it is possible to make Safari [always] open links in new tabs, there is no user-friendly way to do this. To accomplish this behavior you will have to enter a line in Terminal.app:

• Quit Safari (CMD+Q)


• Open Terminal (\Applications\Utitlities\Terminal.app)


• Enter:
  defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true


• Close Terminal and re-open Safari

Tada! That does it indeed. While this is easy enough, Apple should have included it here:

Note: A solution to this problem in the Windows-version of Safari 4 has not yet been found.

Comments

[David]

This solution does not work for me in OS X v10.6.2 and Safari v4.0.4. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I really want to get this working…

Thanks,
David