How to Restart Chrome without Losing your Tabs

You’ve been using Chrome for a while now, and the extension you just installed tells you that to complete the installation you need to restart Chrome. You might delay restarting Chrome since the tabs you have open are too essential to close at that time.

Thanks to a trick Chrome has, you’ll be able to restart Chrome without the fear of losing all your tabs. Even if the tabs you closed are from a previous session, Chrome still offers the possibility of recovering those as well.

Also read: 11 Chrome Flags to Boost Your Browsing

Restore Chrome Tabs from Your Last Session

Your Chrome history should hold onto your session history (unless you regularly clear your browsing history), so that an entire session of your tabs can be restored when you next open Chrome (even after rebooting your PC).

To do this, just open Chrome, click the three-dot menu icon at the top-right corner -> History, then look under “Recently closed.”

You’ll see a list of your your recently closed Chrome tabs. (If you closed Chrome with multiple tabs open, you’ll see something like “4 tabs” or “12 tabs,” depending on how many you had open.) Click the list to restore your session.

Create a Shortcut to Restart Chrome

To start saving all the tabs you have open, you’ll need to expose the bookmark bar by pressing Ctrl + Shift + B. Once the bookmark bar drops down, right-click on an empty space and select the option that says “Add Page.”

When the “Edit Bookmark” window appears, name it something like “Restart Chrome,” and in the URL box, type chrome://restart. Once you’ve finished, make sure to click on Save. The page that you had open when you created this bookmark will be saved with the rest of the bookmarks.

When you click on it, you’ll trigger Chrome to restart, with all the tabs you had open right where you left them. Try to get used to using this bookmark in the future so that each time you restart Chrome, your tabs will return.

Suppose that the last time you used Chrome you were just so tired that you just couldn’t keep your eyes open any longer, and you turned your computer off. It’s a good thing that Chrome has an option that allows you to pick things up where you left off.

To enable this feature, click on the three dots at the top-right of the browser, and click on Settings. When the new tab appears, look for the section that says “On startup” – it will be the last one down. You can go ahead and swipe without worrying you’ll miss it.

The second option down will be the “Continue where you left off” option. Click on this second option, and the changes are automatically saved. There is no need to click on a save button.

Close the tab as you would normally. From that point on, every time you launch Chrome, the tabs that you were using last time will be the first ones you see in your new session. This trick will also work on Chromebook, just in case you were wondering.

Use OneTab to Save Your Tabs

If you’re willing to use an extension, you may want to give OneTab a try. This Chrome extension will save all the tabs you have open into a list you can find in one tab.

Even if you restart Chrome, the extension will have all the tabs neatly listed. It will also show you options of what you can do with your tabs, such as restore all, delete all, share as a web page, and more.

Sooner or later, you’re going to need to restart Chrome after installing an extension or for some other reason. By adding this bookmark, you can now restart it without having to save each tab or trying to remember the sites.