Something weird has been happening over the past few weeks and twice today. I am using Safari and Firefox today. After a bit, I heard a video going off that I had listened to the other day. I looked at all my tabs and couldn't find it. Then I discovered there was another Safari window with a few tabs opened behind the one I was using. Later on today Firefox did the same thing. They aren't always the same tabs but definitely tabs I had opened at one time or the other.

I want to know if I inadvertently clicked on some button that opened Safari or Firefox twice? This has never happened before, and it's really bugging me.

Hi, Rita.

Whatever is happening is odd.

For starters, check your dock next time it happens, and if you've got two Safaris or Firefoxs open at the same time you should see two icons.

Thank you. I will check. So weird! But if I do have two icons, how did that happen? Usually if a browser is open and I click the icon anyway because I didn't realize it was behind the other one, the browser that I clicked the icon for just comes forward but there is no duplicate.

OK. It just happened again in Safari. I was on a webpage and clicked on a link to go to another tab and it opened a whole new Safari browser window. Only one icon on the Dock. Any other time that I click on a link plus Command, it just opens a tab, not a new window.

I inadvertently got into a similar situation once with two Safari windows open and multiple tabs open in each and the survived quiting and re-opening Safari. I finally cleared the situation by selecting one of the windows, individually closing each of the tabs in that window and finally closing the window itself. I often have two Safari windows open, one on each of my monitors, and multiple tabs open in each window as a normal part of my work flow, but to the best of my memory it has survived quiting and re-launching Safari the one time.

Whether to open a new window or tab is a preference setting so it is a finite possible a bit could be switched in memory and a window created instead of a tab, and I think that is far more likely to occur than two separate of Safari, or any browser for that matter.

I went to my Safari prefs to make sure it said open in a new tab but it said "automatically" not "always." I changed it to always and clicked on that same link and it opened in a tab like it should and not a new window. Whew, except not sure why Firefox is doing it too. I checked Firefox prefs and I had "switch to tab not a new window" so it's still a mystery.