How To: Use Pinned Tabs in Safari in OS X El Capitan

The latest version of Safari, found in OS X 10.11 El Capitan, offers something Chrome users have enjoyed from awhile now, pinned tabs. Pinned tabs let you keep websites you access daily ready and waiting whenever you start up Safari, removing the need to keep opening them, or having a number of larger tabs littering the top of your browser.

There are two ways to create a pinned tab. We’ll cover both in this article. First, go to your favorite website, let’s say… MacTrast.com.

Pin a Tab via Right-Click

The first way to pin a tab is via a right-click (or Control+click, two-finger click, whatever you have it set for), on the tab you want to pin. (You’ll need at least two tabs open for this to work), and then click on “Pin Tab.” The pinned tab will slide to the left, showing either an icon, or the first letter of the website’s name.

Pin a Tab via Drag and Drop

You can also pin a Safari tab by dragging and dropping it. Again, with at least two tabs open, click and hold on the tab you’d like to pin, and simply drag it all the way to the left side of the tab bar, and then release to create a tab. Yeah! You can do this stuff in your sleep!

Note: You can also rearrange the pinned tabs in any order you’d like by dragging-and-dropping them.

Removing Pinned Tabs

If you decide you don’t want one of the tabs to be pinned any longer, simply right-click on the pinned tab and click on “Unpin Tab,” or click and hold on the offending tab, and drag it to the right side of the tab bar to transform it back into a lowly regular tab. You can close a tab, and not have to deal with it any longer, by right-clicking the tab and clicking on “Close tab.” Bye-bye tab!

Pinned tabs are the perfect place to place websites you visit frequently. I use them daily for the 10 sites or so I visit to find news and other information to use on MacTrast.

Thanks to the originator of this tip: OS X Daily.

Chris Hauk

Chris is a Senior Editor at Mactrast. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America, and yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.