If you’re a Microsoft Edge user, you may be wondering how to stop the browser from opening links in new tabs. Here’s how:
- Open Microsoft Edge and sign in to your account.
- In the top left corner of the main window, click on three lines that look like a triangle. This will open a menu with options for closing Microsoft Edge and signing out of your account.
- Click on the three lines that look like a triangle again and select “Close this window.” This will close Microsoft Edge and sign out of your account.
Microsoft Edge does something very strange if you use Bing Search. Links will open in new tabs and the Search page stays open in another. This can get annoying, and it’s not clear if Bing or Edge is at fault.
Here’s the problem we’re talking about: You do a search, click a link from the results, and you’re taken to a new tab. You click the back button to return to the results, but it keeps you in the new tab that was just opened. Now you click a different result and you’re taken to yet another new tab.
Every time you click a link, you go to a new tab and the results are left open in the original tab. But going back from the new tab doesn’t take you to that original tab. So you quickly end up with a bunch of Bing Search result tabs open and it’s very frustrating.
The solution is actually in the Bing Safe Search settings for some reason. It only seems to be enabled by default if you use Edge.
Open Microsoft Edge on your Windows, Mac, or Linux PC and go to Bing.com. Click the hamburger menu icon in the top-right corner.
Select “Safe Search” from the menu.
Scroll down to the “Results” section and uncheck both “Open links from search results in a new tab or window” and “Open links from news results in a new tab or window.”
That’s all there is to it, surprisingly. This is a very weird and frustrating “feature” that is clearly designed to keep Bing open as much as possible. Some people have said this gets reset every so often, so you may have to disable it again.
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