It could work this way. When you alt + space (by default) to show the instant search and type your search term and press ENTER, instead of showing the search results in the overlay were you have to then click the button at the top right to move it to a tab, it could automatically open in a background tab. This would be an option where you could configure background or foreground for the behavior.
A first step to this might be to have ctrl + click or shift + click or ctrl + shift + click or middle-click on the button at the top right of the instant search results move it to a background tab instead of a foreground one.
@sgunhouse said in Open new tab in background:
A better answer would be to type it into the current page's address bar, but then open it in the background. Some combination of Shift and/or Ctrl with the Enter key might already do that (not certain).
It seems to be alt + enter for foreground and alt + shift + enter for background. Shift/Ctrl ones seem to open new windows.
