Your mouse wheel can click too — and it saves more time than you'd think

Your mouse wheel isn't just for scrolling. Click it (press straight down, don't roll it) and you get a third mouse button that handles the two most common browser actions — opening a link and closing a tab — faster and more precisely than clicking small targets with the pointer.

A typical scenario

You're going through search results and want to look at five different articles without losing the results page. Normally you'd click a link, read, click back, click the next link — waiting for the page to reload every single time. Click the wheel on every interesting link instead, and the articles open in new background tabs while you stay on the results page, working through the tabs one by one whenever you have a moment.

How to do it

1. Click your mouse wheel on a link (press it straight down, don't roll it) — it opens in a new background tab without leaving the current page.
2. Click your mouse wheel on a tab in the browser's top bar — the tab closes immediately, no need to hunt for the tiny X with your pointer.
3. This works in every major browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari) with nothing to configure.
4. A keyboard alternative for anyone who'd rather not touch the mouse: Ctrl + click a link to open a new background tab, Ctrl + W to close the current tab.
5. On laptops with a trackpad, a three-finger tap or pressing down on the trackpad button usually works as a substitute for the wheel — check your trackpad settings to confirm.

The best tools

• Mouse wheel click (built into every mouse) — works with no setup in every browser.
• Ctrl + click shortcut — an alternative for trackpads or moments when your hand stays on the keyboard.
• Vertical tabs (Edge, Firefox, Chrome extensions) — if wheel-clicking opens a lot of tabs at once, a side tab list reads more clearly than a single row across the top.
• OneTab and similar extensions — for when you've wheel-clicked open one too many tabs and want to quickly tidy them into a list.

What you get out of it

• Time: research and browsing results no longer means repeated back-clicking and waiting for reloads — tens of seconds up to a few minutes a day for anyone who searches a lot.
• Precision: not having to hunt for the small close button means fewer accidentally closed important windows.
• A smoother workflow: your context (search results, a list of links) stays open while you browse individual pages in the background.
• Less hand fatigue: one motion (a wheel click) replaces two or three (click a link, read, click back).

Pro tip

Great for research: scan a results page and wheel-click everything interesting without ever leaving the overview. The tabs "queue up" next to each other, and you just work through them one by one — a perfect pairing with the Ctrl + Tab shortcut for jumping between them.