How to switch to the last tab in Safari
You’re reading docs in one tab and writing in another. You want to flip between the two. In most apps that’s Cmd+Tab. In Safari there’s no such key.
What Safari gives you
Safari’s tab shortcuts all move by position, not by recency:
- Ctrl+Tab or Cmd+Shift+]: next tab to the right.
- Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Cmd+Shift+[: next tab to the left.
- Cmd+1 through Cmd+9: jump to tab 1 to 9. Turn this on in Safari Settings, Tabs, “Use Cmd-1 through Cmd-9 to switch tabs”.
- Cmd+Shift+\: show all tabs as a grid.
- Cmd+Shift+T: reopen the tab you just closed.
That works when your two tabs sit next to each other. Once they’re five tabs apart, you’re counting, or reaching for the mouse.
And closing a tab makes it worse: Safari moves you to the neighbor on the right, not back to the tab you came from.
What’s missing: most recently used order
Apps on your Mac are ordered by when you last used them. Cmd+Tab once flips to the previous app. Hold Cmd and keep tapping Tab to walk further back. Safari has nothing like that for tabs.
ReTab adds it
ReTab is a small Safari extension that does exactly this, with one shortcut:
- Tap Cmd+E to flip to your last tab. Tap again to flip back.
- Hold Cmd+E to bring up a Cmd+Tab-style picker of your recent tabs. Each tap of E steps back one more; Shift steps forward. Let go to land.
- Close a tab and you go back to the tab you came from, not the neighbor.
It stays inside your current tab group, and when two tabs share a title, the picker shows the website so you can tell them apart. On Safari 26 and later you can change the shortcut in Safari Settings, Extensions.
It doesn’t send anything anywhere: no analytics, no network calls. Your tab history stays on your Mac.
ReTab is $1.99, one time, for Mac, iPhone and iPad. If there’s a tab habit it doesn’t cover yet, email me at lychee.isle.support@gmail.com.