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How to Set a Keystroke to Open a Firefox Tab in Chrome – And Keep Flash Out of Firefox [Mac]

Keyboard maestro firefox to chrome tab

Lately, I’ve been seeing how well I can survive without Flash on my MacBook Air. I find my browsing experience to be faster without it, but every now and then I need Flash to use a site. We previously talked about how to watch many YouTube videos without having Flash installed on your system, but what about other sites that use Flash? My setup involves using Firefox as my main browser on my MacBook Air (I use Chrome on my iMac), and switching over to Chrome when I need Flash. Chrome has Flash built in. My setup lets me automatically open my Firefox tab in Chrome, which supports Flash by default, by using a keystroke. Here’s how.

The process relies on Keyboard Maestro, which is a commercial program that I’ve started to fall in love with. Keyboard Maestro is currently $36 from both the developer’s site, and in the Mac App Store. I got it in a Mac bundle for much less. It lets you create macros to automate repetitive tasks. I use a barely tweaked version of a macro from The Carton that lets me tap a key combination to open a Firefox tab in Chrome. Instead of writing out each step, here is what my macro looks like when setting it up:

 

Here is what the finished macro looks like:

Keyboard Maestro

The only difference between this and the macro at the Carton is that I swapped in Firefox for Safari. If you want to see the Safari version, check out the original, which can be found in the last image on that page.

Now, whenever I want to open my current Firefox tab in Chrome, I just hit CTRL-OPTION-CMD-C, and I’m taken right to it. Pretty nifty. Note, though, that this isn’t like the old “IE Tab” Firefox extension, which would open an Internet Explorer tab directly in Firefox. This method still opens up Chrome, but saves you from having to do any manual URL copying and pasting.

Do you have any tricks for avoiding Flash? How about some other cool Keyboard Maestro macros? If so, let us know in the comments.