Keepsake TabsChrome crashed and lost all your tabs? How to get them back
If Chrome closed unexpectedly or came back after an update with an empty window, your tabs are usually still recoverable. Try these in order, and don't keep restarting Chrome while you do: each fresh start can overwrite the session it would need to restore.
1. Press Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T on a Mac)
This reopens the last closed tab or window. If the whole window was lost, one press often brings back every tab in it. Press it again to step further back.
2. Check History > Recently closed
Open the Chrome menu (⋮) and go to History. Under Recently closed, a lost window appears as one entry such as "12 tabs". Click it to reopen all of them.
3. Search your full history
Open chrome://history (or press Ctrl+H). Every page you had open is listed with the time you visited it.
If you use Chrome sync, Tabs from other devices may also still show the tabs from another computer or phone.
4. Last resort: the Sessions folder
Chrome keeps its open tabs in session files inside your profile folder:
- Windows:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Sessions - macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Sessions - Linux:
~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Sessions
Close Chrome completely and copy that whole folder somewhere safe first. The files are named
Session_<number> and Tabs_<number>; the higher number is the newer one. Restoring
works by moving the newest files out so Chrome falls back to the older pair, but it is fiddly and not guaranteed, so work
only on copies. (If you use a profile other than the first one, the folder is Profile 1,
Profile 2 and so on instead of Default.)
How to make sure it never happens again
- Settings > On startup > Continue where you left off, so a normal restart reopens your tabs.
- Save groups you care about: recent Chrome versions let you save a tab group and reopen it from the tab groups menu. These saved groups still live inside your Chrome profile, so a broken or reset profile can take them with it.
- Keep a copy outside the browser. A backup file you can import again is the only copy that survives a broken profile, a reinstall or a new computer.