How to restore tabs in Chrome

July 2, 2024
finding tabs
How to restore tabs in chrome

It can be quite frustrating when a group of tabs you had opened is accidentally closed, chrome crashes, or they simply weren't saved when you restart your computer. If you've lost your tabs in google chrome, we'll show you how to get them back quickly.

Shortcut to restore tabs in google Chrome

The quickest way to restore tabs in Chrome is using the keyboard shortcut for restoring tabs. Google Chrome will automatically open the last closed tab or window.

It just depends whether you’re on a Mac or Windows computer.

Restore tabs shortcut on Mac:

Mac shortcut to restore tabs in chrome

If you’re on a mac, you can also click File > Reopen closed tab.

Restore tabs shortcut on Windows computer:

Windows shortcut to restore tabs in Chrome

If you continue to hit the keyboard shortcut, Chrome will continue to open/restore the last closed tab/windows.

Manually restore tabs in Chrome

You can also access your recently closed tabs and windows from the Chrome menu.

  1. Click on the 3 dots on the upper right hand corner of Chrome
  2. Hover over History
  3. Click on the tab/tabs that you want to restore
Restoring tabs manually in Chrome

Restore tabs from Chrome history and search your history for closed tabs

If you still can’t restore or find the tabs you were looking for, you can try searching your Chrome history for the tabs. Simply hit ⌘ + Y on a Mac or Ctrl + h on a windows computer. You can also click the 3 dots on the upper right hand corner of Chrome, hover over history, and then click on History to open the history search page in Chrome.

From here, you can search all your recent history and restore tabs.

Enable restoring tabs after restart in Google Chrome

If you’d like to restore tabs on restart going forward, its simple:

  1. Open the Chrome menu (click the 3-dot menu in the upper-right corner of Chrome)
  2. Click Settings
  3. Scroll to the On Startup section at the bottom of the page
  4. Click to enable the setting Continue where you left off

Is there a better way?

Tab Sessions

Partizion's tab session manager automatically creates, saves, and syncs tabs for you so that managing and restoring tabs in chrome is dead simple. It uses a local + cloud storage strategy that almost guarantees your tabs and sessions will be saved, no matter what.

You can restore single tabs or whole sessions from Partizion's dashboard easily.

Auto-updating tab collections

Partizion also has a collections feature. Think of a collection like a project or a collection of related tabs. You can save tabs to collections to keep things like recipes, reading lists, shopping lists, blog posts or anything else in a single collection / folder. You can also use collections to create separate "contexts" for bits of work like having a collection for a research paper you're writing, a website re-design, a PR you're working on, a client write up, or any other way you work with tabs.

Collections in Partizion — group tabs together to restore later

Collections are extra powerful because they have an auto-update feature. When enabled, Partizion will automatically update your tab collection as you browse. If you open or close tabs during your session, Partizion will update the tabs in your custom collection. That way, when you need to come back to that "context", you can restore the tabs exactly how you left off.

More reliable tab and session restoring

Restoring tabs in Chrome is cumbersome. You need to click through a bunch of menus and there is no way to see what is in each session. Clicking CMD/CNTL + SHIFT + T to hopefully restore the tab or window that you’re looking for is also a hit or miss method. Often times all tabs are lost after a Chrome restart or update.

We built a tool for this exact reason. Browsers get too cluttered too easily. Restoring sessions is hard. While working, you quickly get too many tabs open, and don’t know what to do with them.

Partizion is a bookmark/session/tab manager that helps you declutter your browser, save and restore tabs, and organize your work. It makes restoring tabs in Chrome

How to prevent losing tabs in the future

The best way to never lose tabs again is to install a session manager extension for chrome. It's just a bit risky relying on the in-memory storage of browsers to restore your tabs and work.

See why Partizion has 4.8 stars on the chrome store, and why so many people are decluttering their browsers and getting into deep work using Partizion. No more losing work. No more 25+ tabs open. No more smashing your keyboard to restore that tab you’re looking for. Just seamless, simple, and powerful tab management.

An Essential Tool for
Essentially Anything

Partizion is the most advance Tab and Session Manager extension for Chrome
Partizion the most advanced tab and session manager extension for Chrome. Manage Tabs, Save Session, and find any link or tab with search! Combat too many tabs with Partizion