9

When I'm browsing on my computer, I can press CTRL-W or click the X on a tab to close it. That's convenient. But it seems Chrome for Android has no similar function.

To close the current tab on Android, I need to click the "tabs" icon which brings up all tabs. This often takes 10-60 seconds on my phone because there is anything between 100-3000 tabs open/cached there, and it seems very unnecessary.

Is there another way to close the current tab without first loading all the tabs?

Andrew T.
  • 15,988
  • 10
  • 74
  • 123
user985366
  • 407
  • 1
  • 4
  • 11
  • 1
    Obviously this is not the answer to your question, but I would suggest closing some tabs. If you have 3000 of them, there's no time-efficient way you could get to tabs far off in the stack (not to mention having to visually find them!), so there's no point in having them. – Nonny Moose Jun 11 '21 at 02:25
  • @NonnyMoose There is a time-efficient way. See the most recent answer to this other question https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/155955/how-many-tabs-are-open-in-chrome-browser-above-100 – user985366 Jan 01 '23 at 17:21

2 Answers2

15

Long press the tab number next to the 3 vertical dot, a menu will appear. Select Close tab.

enter image description here

Reddy Lutonadio
  • 7,164
  • 2
  • 17
  • 49
2

Install a keyboard that has a control key. Here is one such keyboard.

To close the active tab without displaying all tabs, tap the address bar to invoke the keyboard, then press Ctrl+W (the keyboard should let you tap the two keys separately in the order Ctrl,W). The tab will close and the next older tab will become active.

To change the active tab without displaying all tabs, swipe the address bar left or right. This is useful if you need to skip over a tab you don't want to close.

To open a new tab without displaying all tabs, tap the three dot menu icon and choose "New tab."

Using these three methods, you should be able to completely avoid displaying all tabs. I believe the only function you need to show all tabs to access is "close all tabs." Even that might be possible with something like Ctrl+Shift+W but I don't want to try it because I too have an embarrassing amount of tabs I need to sort through.

Kyle Faucett
  • 21
  • 1