Microsoft Edge Keyboard Shortcuts
Edge rebuilt itself on the Chromium engine in 2020, and the practical result is that nearly every tab, navigation, and devtools shortcut works identically to Chrome — anyone fluent in one is immediately fluent in the other for the basics. Where Edge earns its own section rather than just pointing at Chrome's page is its added features layered on top: vertical tabs, Collections, and Sleeping Tabs each bring their own bindings that have no Chrome equivalent at all. Windows uses Ctrl as the primary modifier and is Edge's most common platform by far given its default-install status; Mac swaps in Cmd with the same general structure. Because Edge ships pre-installed on every copy of Windows, it also tends to be the browser IT departments standardize on for managed corporate machines, which means a meaningful share of Edge's real-world usage happens in workplaces where the browser was chosen for the user rather than by them — a different adoption pattern than Chrome or Firefox, which people more typically install by deliberate choice.
Tabs Windows
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| New tab | Ctrl+T | Cmd+T | Opens a new tab landing on Edge's customizable start page, which by default shows an MSN-powered news feed and quick-access site tiles rather than a blank page, with the option to switch that default layout to a focused or inspirational mode from the page's own settings gear; the address bar is focused immediately for typing. |
| Reopen last closed tab | Ctrl+Shift+T | Cmd+Shift+T | Restores the most recently closed tab, and can be pressed repeatedly to restore several tabs in the reverse order they were closed. |
| Switch to tab by number | Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8 | Cmd+1 through Cmd+8 | Snaps focus straight to whichever tab sits at that numbered position, counting from the left edge of the tab strip, while Ctrl+9 is the odd one out and always lands on the final tab no matter how many are open. |
| Manually put tab to sleep | Right-click tab > Put this tab to sleep | — | Manually forces an inactive tab into Edge's Sleeping Tabs state, freeing up the memory and CPU it was consuming in the background — a feature with no direct Chrome equivalent, aimed at users who keep large numbers of tabs open simultaneously. |
Navigation
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus the address bar | Ctrl+L or Alt+D | Cmd+L | Highlights everything currently in the address bar so a new URL or search term can replace it directly, the same behavior as Chrome's identical binding. |
| Open DevTools | F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I | Cmd+Option+I | Opens the same Chromium DevTools panel Chrome uses, since Edge runs on the identical rendering and debugging engine underneath. |
| Hard reload (bypass cache) | Ctrl+Shift+R | Cmd+Shift+R | Reloads the page while ignoring the local cache, forcing fresh downloads of all page resources — useful when a page appears to be showing stale content after a deployment. |
| Open browsing history | Ctrl+H | Cmd+Y | Opens the complete browsing history page in the same place Chrome puts its equivalent, letting you search back through or revisit anything you've previously viewed. |
Edge Features
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toggle vertical tabs | Ctrl+Shift+, | Cmd+Shift+, | Switches the tab strip from the default horizontal layout at the top to a vertical list docked on the left side, a layout with no Chrome equivalent that's useful for users who keep dozens of tabs open. |
| Open Collections | Ctrl+Shift+Y | Cmd+Shift+Y | Opens the Collections sidebar, Edge's built-in tool for saving and organizing groups of links, images, and notes for a research task or shopping list, with no direct Chrome equivalent. |
| Toggle split screen | Ctrl+Shift+(comma varies by version) | N/A | Divides the current tab into two panes sitting side by side, each showing a different page, an Edge-specific trick for comparing two sites at a glance without juggling separate windows. |
| Open Immersive Reader | Ctrl+Shift+U (varies by version) | Cmd+Shift+U | Activates Edge's distraction-free reading mode with text spacing, line focus, and read-aloud options, more feature-rich than Chrome's comparatively bare reading mode. |
Frequently Asked Questions
If Edge shares Chrome's engine, why bother learning Edge-specific shortcuts at all?
The core browsing shortcuts (tabs, navigation, devtools) are genuinely identical, so there's nothing extra to learn there. The Edge-specific value is entirely in its added features — vertical tabs, Collections, split screen, and Immersive Reader — none of which exist in stock Chrome, so those bindings are the only ones worth deliberately memorizing beyond what you already know from Chrome.
Does vertical tabs change any other shortcut behavior?
No — switching to vertical tabs only changes the visual layout of the tab strip. Tab-number shortcuts, switching, and closing all continue to work exactly the same way regardless of whether tabs are displayed horizontally or vertically.
Is Edge available on Linux, and do the shortcuts differ there?
Yes, Microsoft ships a Linux build of Edge, and it uses the same Ctrl-based shortcuts as the Windows version since both treat Ctrl as the standard modifier outside of Mac.
What actually happens to a tab when Sleeping Tabs puts it to sleep?
A sleeping tab's page content and running scripts are unloaded from memory while the tab itself remains visible in the tab strip with its title and favicon intact, so clicking back into it simply reloads the page fresh — the feature exists specifically to reduce the RAM and CPU overhead of dozens of background tabs sitting open but unused.
Can an IT-managed version of Edge disable some of these shortcuts?
Yes — because Edge is frequently deployed and configured centrally through Group Policy or Microsoft Intune in corporate environments, an organization's IT department can disable certain features (like Collections or specific DevTools functionality) or lock down settings, which means some shortcuts covered here may simply do nothing on a heavily managed work machine even though they work normally on a personal install.
Does Edge's Immersive Reader work on any webpage, or only specific article-style sites?
It works on most standard article-style content by attempting to detect and isolate the main readable text from surrounding navigation, ads, and sidebars, though highly interactive or heavily app-like pages (a web-based spreadsheet, for instance) generally aren't good candidates since there's no clean article body for the reader to extract and reformat.
Are Collections synced across devices the same way bookmarks are?
Yes, when signed into a Microsoft account, Collections sync across any device running Edge with that same account signed in, similarly to how bookmarks and browsing history sync — this is part of why Collections work well as a lightweight cross-device research tool rather than being tied to a single machine's local session.
Does Edge have a shortcut for opening a site directly in Internet Explorer mode?
Yes, though it requires the site first be added to the IE mode compatibility list in edge://settings — once added, Edge automatically reloads that specific site in IE mode when visited, rather than offering a general-purpose keyboard shortcut to force any arbitrary page into that legacy rendering mode on demand.