How to restore tabs on Chrome - open recently closed tabs‍

Has it ever happened to you that you were in a hurry and accidentally closed the wrong tab? Or clicked on the close button in Google Chrome and ended up losing all your recently closed tabs? Or even, accidentally closed all the apps open in your PC in one go? It is definitely disheartening when the multitude of tabs kept open while you were researching an important topic have all now vanished. So what can you do about this? How can you open recently closed tabs? As far as Google Chrome is concerned, there’s not just one, but a number of ways in which you can restore these tabs. We’ve put together the below guide to help you learn how to restore tabs on Chrome.

How to restore tabs on Chrome?

As stated above, there are multiple ways through which you can open recently closed tabs on Google Chrome. We have elaborated on 4 of these below in easy to understand steps.

• Open the tabs that were just closed
• Open the last set of tabs every time you open Chrome
• Open selective recent tabs only
• Open tabs from history

1. Open the tabs that were just closed

Chrome offers a very easy solution through which you can open any tab or group of tabs that were closed by you the last time you used the app. The same steps work on both Mac as well as on PC.

• Open Google Chrome on your computer.
• Go to the blank space on the Chrome tab bar at the top, next to the ‘open tab’ (+) icon. Right click here.
• You will now see a list of options such as Restore, New tab, Minimize, Task Manager, etc.
• The ‘Reopen Closed Tab’ option will also be in this list. Click on it.
• It’s also seen that the keyboard shortcut is mentioned along with the option. You can use this, too. It’s ‘Ctrl + Shift + T’ on PC and ‘Command + Shift + T’ on Mac.

This option opens the last tabs depending on the number. So, if you accidentally closed only one tab or a few tabs, but not the window, then on pressing the option, you will be able to restore the most recently closed tab, and can do this for all the tabs closed.

If however, you closed the app itself (i.e., the window), leading to multiple tabs closing at once, you can just follow the exact same method to get back all your tabs. Now, the option when you right click in the blank space will show as ‘Reopen closed window’, and the shortcut remains the same, ‘Ctrl + shift + T’ or ‘Command + Shift + T’ depending on whether you use PC or Mac respectively.

2. Open the last set of tabs every time you open Chrome

If you wish to automatically open all the last closed tabs every time you open Chrome, you can do so by following these steps.

• Click on the three dots at the top right, this is the ‘Customize and Control Google Chrome’ option. Go to ‘Settings’

• Scroll down to find the ‘On Start-up’ option on the left-hand-side panel.
• From the options given, select ‘Continue where you left off’.

3. Open selective recent tabs only

Through this option you can not only open tabs that were accessed on your computer, but if you have synced Chrome with your mobile device, you can open tabs from there, too.

• Click on the three dots at the top right in Google Chrome. Now select ‘History.’
• You will see a list of the ‘Recently closed’ tabs on the devices that have been synced. Choose the ones you wish to open.

4. Open tabs from history

If you are wondering how to restore tabs on Chrome, but the tabs aren’t recent and not shown in your ‘Recently closed ’ list, you can still restore these tabs, provided they are in your history. Follow the steps below:

• Click on the three dots at the top right corner in Google Chrome. Select ‘History’ and again select ‘History’ from the drop down menu that appears. You will see your complete browsing history.
  Alternatively, you can use ‘Ctrl+H’ or ‘Command + H’ to open the same page.
• Here, your entire browsing history, since it was last cleared, is shown. You will see on the left-hand-side panel that you can also specifically view tabs from other devices.
• Your browsing history is date-sorted and the tabs opened on the most recent date are shown at the top. The time of opening is also given.
• You can now open the desired tabs from your history.

• If you don’t want to browse the list but you remember a keyword from either the url or the title of the page, then you can search for this in the search bar on the Chrome History page, too. This will help narrow down the search.

You can also restore closed tabs automatically with one click using SmartWindows that provides tab restoration support for Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

If you find the above content helpful, also check out our other blogs on Google Chrome such as how to stop Chrome from taking too much memory and how to make sure your firewall doesn't block Chrome from accessing the internet.