Chrome Story

Home » Google Chrome Guides » How to Restore Tabs in Chrome

How to Restore Tabs in Chrome

Dinsan

Add as a preferred source on Google

Subscribe on YouTube

To restore a closed tab in Chrome, press Ctrl + Shift + T (or Cmd + Shift + T on a Mac). Repeat the shortcut to keep bringing back tabs you closed earlier, and if Chrome crashed, look for a Restore option on relaunch to get your whole last session back.

Applies to: Google Chrome on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, and Linux.

Note: If you are looking for chrome-native://recent-tabs, that page no longer exists. See the full list of available chrome:// pages at chrome://chrome-urls/.

How Do I Reopen a Tab I Just Closed?

Press Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen the last tab you closed. Press the same shortcut again to bring back the tab before that, and keep pressing it to work back through several of your most recently closed tabs. This shortcut works on Windows, macOS (use Cmd instead of Ctrl), ChromeOS, and Linux.

You can also right-click on the Chrome toolbar area outside the row of tabs and choose Reopen closed tab.

reopen closed tab

How Do I Reopen an Older Tab From History?

  1. Click the three-dot menu next to your profile picture.Chrome Three Dots Settings Icon
  2. Click History.
    Chrome History in Menu
  3. Click the site you want to reopen.
Reopen a Chrome Tab
Reopen a Chrome Tab

You can also open the full History page (Ctrl + H, or Cmd + Y on macOS) to browse or search for a specific site you want to reopen.

How Do I Restore All My Tabs After Chrome Crashes?

When Chrome restarts after a crash, it usually shows an option to restore all tabs from your previous session. Click Restore to reopen every tab you had open.

restore tabs after crash

How Do I Make Chrome Always Reopen My Last Session?

Turn on Continue where you left off and Chrome will automatically reopen every tab from your last session each time you start the browser.

  1. Open a new tab and go to chrome://settings.
  2. Under On startup, select Continue where you left off.
continue where you left off

How Do I Restore a Closed Tab Group?

If the last thing you closed was a tab group, Ctrl + Shift + T reopens the whole group. For a tab group you closed earlier:

  1. Open the three-dot menu and select History.
  2. Select Recently Closed.
  3. Find your tab group and select Restore Group.
Reopen Closed Chrome Tab Groups

Frequently Asked Questions

How many closed tabs can I reopen with Ctrl + Shift + T?

You can keep pressing the shortcut to work back through several of your most recently closed tabs, not just the last one.

Why didn’t Chrome show a Restore option after it crashed?

If Chrome closed normally instead of crashing, or if Continue where you left off is already turned on, you may not see a separate restore prompt because your tabs reopen automatically. Check chrome://settings under On startup to confirm which option is active.

Can I restore tabs that were open on a different device?

Yes, if you are signed in to Chrome with sync turned on. Open History and look under Tabs from other devices to see and reopen tabs from your other signed-in devices.

Questions on restoring closed Chrome tabs? Let us know in the comments and we will update this article with additional information.

Related Guides

Last verified: August 20, 2026

Dinsan Avatar
Dinsan

Founder & Editor

Dinsan Francis is the founder of Chrome Story, which he started in 2009 — the same year Google launched Chrome. He has covered the Chrome browser and Chromebook ecosystem for over 15 years and has used Chromebooks as his primary computing device since 2010. He’s always on the bleeding edge, running the Canary build of both Chrome and ChromeOS as daily drivers.

Read Full Bio

Discover more from Chrome Story

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Comments

23 responses to “How to Restore Tabs in Chrome”

  1. chrome story Avatar
    chrome story

    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

    Reply
  2. na5m Avatar
    na5m

    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.

    Reply
  3. chrome story Avatar
    chrome story

    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 ..

    Reply
  4. MAQ Avatar
    MAQ

    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

    Reply
  5. Pasquale Avatar
    Pasquale

    I have a different problem. Even if I have closed all tabs, when I restart Chrome, it opens the tabs from several days ago.

    Reply
  7. chrome story Avatar
    chrome story

    @ Ali

    thanks for sharing .. I was wondering if there is any native extension, other than greasemonkey

    Reply
  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    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!!!

    Reply
  9. N/A Avatar
    N/A

    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

    Reply
  11. Aigars Avatar
    Aigars

    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?

    Reply
  12. kendal Avatar
    kendal

    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?

    Reply
  13. Laurent Avatar
    Laurent

    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?

    Reply
  14. Sorin Acela Avatar
    Sorin Acela

    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!

    Reply
  15. Laurent Avatar
    Laurent

    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?

    Reply
  16. Zac Helmberger Avatar
    Zac Helmberger

    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!

    Reply
  17. dada Avatar
    dada

    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!

    Reply
  18. Antonio Avatar
    Antonio

    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

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *