This article explains how to restore closed Chrome and Chromebook tabs and also how to restore a browsing session after a crash. We will start by restarting a closed tab and move on to keyboard shortcuts and more.
Restore Closed Tabs
To restore a recently closed Chrome tab:
- Click Settings (three dots icon next to your profile picture).
- Click History.
- Click the site that you want to reopen.
You can, however, do this quickly using a keyboard shortcut. Press CTRL + SHIFT + T to reopen the last tab that you closed.
Press the the same keyboard combination again to open the tab before that. You can do this up to the last nine tabs. This keyboard shortcut works on all platforms including Windows 10, macOS, (Replace CTRL with CMD) Chromebooks, and Linux.
You can also right-click on the Chrome toolbar area outside the row of tabs and choose “Reopen closed tab”.
You can also open the history page (CTRL + H or CMD + Y on macOS) and open any tab from there. You also have the option to search for specific websites.
Restore Chrome Tabs After Crash
When Chrome restarts after a crash, you will see an option to restore all tabs from the previous session. Click Restore to reopen all those tabs.
Continue where you left off
Another option is to enable “Continue where you left off” in settings. With this enabled, Chrome will reopen all the tabs from your last browsing session every time you open the browser. To enable this:
- Open a new tab and go to chrome://settings.
- Under “On startup” select the radio button that says “Continue where you left off“
Questions on restoring closed Chrome tabs? Let us know in the comments section and we will update the article with additional information.
you can uninstall using control panel if you are using Windows .. please specify your OS .. or post this question on our forum 🙂 chromestory.com/forum
i was soooo frustrated with Chrome for closing my tabs without warning. but this video has helped. now i know how to restore past browsing sessions. However, overall, it is still way too disruptive to restore rather than simply deal with a “Close Multiple Tabs?” confirmation dialog box. For instance, what if you were in the middle of a financial transaction (purchasing with credit card or transferring bank funds)? Or in a chat room? etc…. Even though you’ve restored your sessions, you are now unsure of what state the transactions are in that you were working on.
Yes, I also think the same way .. this also happens when you are watching a movie online, streaming video .. you loose everything that you were doing ..
how stupid this guy is saying in the video that our designers dont want to disturb the users by giving warnings … true! …. a lot of users dont like to get that warning but at the same time so many users would prefer to get this warning …. I can not possibly imagine how hard could it be for chrome designers to add a feature, where users can select in “Options” menu if they want this warning or not
I have a different problem. Even if I have closed all tabs, when I restart Chrome, it opens the tabs from several days ago.
Never mind, I fixed it.
@ Ali
thanks for sharing .. I was wondering if there is any native extension, other than greasemonkey
Thank you for the Control+Shift+T solution! I had closed a huge multi-tab Chrome window, but one single separate (individual) window was still open, so when reopening Chrome I lost all my tabs. This easy shortcut (pressed a couple of times) brought them all back!!!
you are welcome !
So you clicked on the TOOLS menu, then what did you select, you didnt say.
Btw, I have a Mac (Snow Leopard) and im using Chrome 5.0.375.70 beta.
So I see the TOOL, but I can’t find the rest of what you did/showed.
Thanks
I would say Chrome sucks! It doesn’t restore crashed session!
well, in my experience, it does..
i’m kinda frustrated at chrome!
What i usually have and am afraid of is that when i open two separate chrome window browsers (not tabs) and accidentally first close the one with a lot of tabs in it and then close the other one with only one tab – I can only restore the last browser tab opened! AND THAT MAKES ME ANGRY! just because i can’t see those closed tabs in history! they disappear and I can’t find where!!
any help?
I had to restart my computer, and restart Chrome. At first it asked if I wanted to restore my last session. But Chrome crashed. I started it again. And I don’t see the option now. And I can’t find the Tools menu. I’m running version 17.0.963.46 on a Macbook Pro. I’d really like my tabs back today…. what do I do?
For today, I fear it’ll be too late… But you can take a look at your history (Ctl+H) and scroll back to the date you opened your tabs.
This said, the guys @ Chrome seem to have disabled the aforementioned function (or, at least the ACCESS to this function) since dev-branch 17. Maybe a tweak/hack/extension out there?
That video is totally out of date. Due to bad designing, I was only lucky to find the newest way (GC v17) carefully hidden by the programmers. Open a new tab and you will see the RECENT CLOSED link, small, grey-on-grey, at the right of the lower bar of the window. Such a useful feature so badly taken care of. The newer generations of programmers and designer are so narrow-minded!
I haven’t got such a link as you suggest, Sorin. Only “most visited” and “Apps”. And I’m on french Chromium v. 19 (19.0.1042.0 (Build de développement 121875 Windows). What do you have exactly next to your “grey on grey” link?
OMG THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I realized the probelm was that I had the extension “New Tab Redirect” enabled and could not see the feature you were referring to. Miraculously, I was able to disable the extension without having to reboot! Now my session is RESTORED!! I clicked on the thingie at the top of the drop up menu for recently closed tabs that said “12 tabs” and all is well!
Just make sure the “New Tab Redirect” extension is disabled in order to see this valuable feature!
yours is the most helpful of all the articles I came across when I searched for help on how to reopen chrome tabs after I accidentally closed all of them! thank you so much!
After opening a gazillion webpages, my chrome browser crashed. Upon clicking the request to restore – I accidentally open Gmail in the same browser thus canceling the restore yellow tab on that webpage. Restarted my computer the restored requests was the longer available. How can I restore all those windows so I can complete what I was doing. I’m a graduate research student. I’m asking how to open all the windows that I Had prior to the crash & restarting the computer
I found it to be very good espeshally when u are computer illiterate.