How to restore tabs in Chrome

To restore tabs in Chrome, press Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T on a Mac). It reopens the last tab or window you closed, and each further press goes one step back. If the shortcut brings nothing, open the Chrome menu, go to History, and pick the entry under Recently closed.

That covers a window closed by mistake. After a restart, an update or a crash, Chrome has a few more places to look. They are below in the order to try them.

Before you start, leave the new window alone

Chrome’s list of recently closed tabs and windows is short. It holds about 25 entries, and each new thing you close pushes an old one off the end. Try the steps below before you open and close more tabs.

Restore tabs with Ctrl+Shift+T

1. Click the Chrome window you want the tabs in.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+T, or Cmd+Shift+T on a Mac.
3. Press it again to go further back, to the tab before that, then a whole window, and sometimes the entire previous session.

A window comes back as a window, so a 12-tab window returns in one press. Incognito windows are the exception. Chrome forgets those the moment they close.

If the shortcut does nothing at all, our guide to opening closed tabs lists the usual causes, along with the same steps for Edge, Firefox and Safari.

Restore a closed window from the History menu

1. Open the Chrome menu, the three dots at the top right.
2. Hover over History.
3. Under Recently closed, click the entry for the window. It reads something like “12 tabs”.

The window comes back whole, with its tabs in order. Two other routes open the same list.

• Right-click an empty part of the tab strip and choose Reopen closed tab.
• Press Ctrl+Shift+A (Cmd+Shift+A on a Mac) to open tab search. Recently closed tabs are listed below your open ones, and typing filters them.

This list sits in the History menu. The full history page at chrome://history shows single pages, which helps further down.

Restore tabs after Chrome restarts

If you quit Chrome, or it restarted for an update, the previous session is usually the first entry under Recently closed. One press of Ctrl+Shift+T often brings the whole window back.

Make Chrome restore tabs automatically

1. Open the Chrome menu and choose Settings.
2. On the left, select On startup.
3. Choose Continue where you left off.

Chrome then reopens the pages you had open when you quit, and its help page says your cookies and data are kept, so sites you were signed in to open signed in. The same setting is at chrome://settings/onStartup.

Restore tabs after a Chrome crash

When Chrome knows it shut down badly, the next launch shows a Restore pages? bubble. Click Restore and the windows come back. The bubble is offered once. Restarting the browser sometimes brings it back after you dismiss it, but do not count on that.

With Continue where you left off turned on, Chrome usually skips the question and reopens everything after a crash. If neither happens, the shortcut and the Recently closed entry above still apply.

Restore tabs from another device

If you are signed in to Chrome on more than one machine, each one keeps a list of the others’ tabs. Open the Chrome menu, then History, then Tabs from other devices. The same list is at chrome://history/syncedTabs. A laptop that will not start matters less when your desktop holds a copy of what it had open.

Restore tab groups

Chrome’s help page says a closed tab group is not deleted. It is saved in the bookmarks bar or in the menu. Click the group on the bookmarks bar, or open the Chrome menu, choose Tab groups, and pick it. Ctrl+Shift+T also reopens a group you just closed. There is more in how to group tabs in Chrome.

Find the pages in your history

If the window is gone as a unit, its pages are still in your history one by one. Press Ctrl+H (Cmd+Y on a Mac), search for what you remember, and reopen the pages that mattered. The history page lists visits by date, so the hour before you lost the window is usually one run of the right addresses. We cover the search box, the address bar route and the date view in how to search your Chrome history.

Restore tabs in Chrome on Android and iPhone

Open the Chrome menu and tap Recent tabs. It lists the tabs you closed on the phone and the tabs open on your other signed-in devices. Chrome on a phone reopens its tabs after most restarts, so a missing tab is usually in this list.

Restore tabs on a Chromebook

The same tools work. Ctrl+Shift+T reopens closed tabs and windows, and Recently closed is in the same History submenu. A Chromebook restarts to install system updates, so Continue where you left off is worth turning on there.

Last resort, the Sessions folder

Chrome writes its session state to timestamped files in a folder called Sessions, inside your profile folder. Type chrome://version in the address bar and read Profile Path to find it. If a crash damaged the current session and an older file survived, recovery is sometimes possible.

1. Close Chrome.
2. Copy the whole Sessions folder somewhere safe.
3. Work on the copy, and only then try restoring the older session files.

File names and behavior change between Chrome versions, and one wrong move overwrites the files you are trying to save. Expect mixed results.

Stop losing tabs in the first place

Everything above depends on what Chrome itself remembers, and a bad crash or a damaged profile can take that with it. Two changes cover you.

1. Turn on Continue where you left off, as described above.
2. Keep an extension that copies your windows on a schedule, so a copy exists that Chrome cannot lose.

The second is what our extension, UtilEngine, does. It snapshots all your open windows every hour, on an interval you can change, and keeps 14 days of history, up to 500 snapshots. Closing a window writes one final snapshot. After a crash you press your shortcut (Alt+Z by default), type “restore”, and pick the snapshot from an hour ago. If all you remember is one tab, the Session Manager searches every tab across your snapshots and saved sessions and shows which one it sat in. Windows you save as named sessions sync across your machines.

UtilEngine is paid, $49 once with no subscription, and the snapshots are one part of a larger launcher. Free tools do parts of this too, and we compared eight of them in the best tab manager extensions for Chrome.

To keep a set of tabs on purpose before you close them, see how to save tabs in Chrome.

Common questions

My Chrome tabs disappeared. How do I get them back?

Press Ctrl+Shift+T first. If nothing returns, open the Chrome menu, go to History, and look under Recently closed for an entry with a tab count. If that list is empty, check Tabs from other devices, then search chrome://history for the pages one at a time.

How do I reopen a closed window in Chrome?

Press Ctrl+Shift+T. A closed window comes back as a window, with its tabs in order. The same window is listed in the Chrome menu under History, in Recently closed.

Can I restore tabs from a few days ago?

Only page by page, unless something was keeping copies. Recently closed does not reach that far back. You can reopen pages one at a time from chrome://history, or use a session manager that was already saving your windows. UtilEngine keeps 14 days of snapshots.

Chrome restarted for an update and my tabs are gone. What now?

The same steps apply. Ctrl+Shift+T and Recently closed are the first two moves, and Continue where you left off prevents the repeat.

Can I restore incognito tabs?

No. Chrome forgets an incognito window when it closes, so there is nothing to restore.