Restarting Chrome can fix a lot of small glitches, like a stuck extension or a page that stopped loading right. The good news is you don’t have to lose your open tabs to do it. Chrome can bring every tab back automatically, or you can trigger a quick restart with one click.
Turn On Session Restore
This is the easiest way to make sure your tabs always come back, even after a crash or a full shutdown.
- Open Chrome and click the three-dot menu in the top right, then select Settings.
- Click On startup in the left sidebar.
- Select Continue where you left off.
With this turned on, Chrome reopens your entire last session automatically, all your windows, tabs, and tab groups, whenever you launch the browser again.
Restart Chrome With chrome://restart
If you just want to force a quick restart without closing and reopening Chrome yourself, type chrome://restart into the address bar and press Enter. Chrome closes every window and relaunches right away. If you have “Continue where you left off” turned on, your tabs come right back. If not, you’ll get a fresh new tab instead, so it’s worth turning that setting on first.
Create a One-Click Restart Bookmark
You can also save chrome://restart as a bookmark so it’s always one click away.
- Right-click the bookmarks bar and choose Add page (press Ctrl+Shift+B first if the bookmarks bar isn’t showing).
- Name it something like “Restart Chrome.”
- Enter chrome://restart in the URL field and click Save.
Now, whenever you click that bookmark, Chrome closes every open tab and reopens them right away, no manual restart needed.
Quick tip: If you close a tab or an entire window by accident, press Ctrl+Shift+T (or Cmd+Shift+T on Mac) to bring it right back, even without restarting the browser.
That’s all it takes to restart Chrome without losing a single tab. Turn on session restore once, and you’ll never have to worry about it again.
Leave a Reply