How to restore tabs in Chrome: closed, crashed or gone

Updated 2 November 2026. 3 minute read.

To bring back what you just closed, press Ctrl + Shift + T on Windows or ⌘ + Shift + T on a Mac. Press it again to go further back. If a whole window went, open Chrome’s three-dot menu, choose History, and pick it under Recently closed.

TabOverview’s Closed and earlier page, listing four earlier days of tabs with Bring back buttons, two switches, and pages closed today. — Your tabs from earlier days, and everything you closed. Real screenshot of TabOverview. The sites in it are made up.

You just closed a tab

Press Ctrl + Shift + T on Windows or Linux, or ⌘ + Shift + T on a Mac. Chrome reopens the last thing you closed. Keep pressing to reopen earlier ones.

You closed a whole window

The same shortcut brings back a window you just closed, with all its tabs. You can also do it from the menu:

Open the three-dot menu at the top right of Chrome.
Point to History.
Under Recently closed, choose the window you want. It’s listed with its number of tabs.
If you see Restore Window, choose that.

Chrome crashed or your computer restarted

Chrome may offer to restore your pages when it next opens. If it does, press Restore before you do anything else. If it doesn’t, or you missed it, press Ctrl + Shift + T or ⌘ + Shift + T, or look in History under Recently closed.

Make Chrome reopen your tabs every time

Open the three-dot menu and choose Settings.
Open On startup.
Choose Continue where you left off.

Chrome now reopens the pages you had open when you quit. Sites you were signed in to stay signed in, so think twice about this on a shared computer.

The tabs are really gone

Press Ctrl + H on Windows or ⌘ + Y on a Mac to open History. It covers the last 90 days, so you can search for a word you remember from the page. It doesn’t include Incognito, and it lists pages you visited, not which tabs you had open together.

If you sync your history, it also shows pages you visited on your other devices. That’s worth checking if the tabs were open on a laptop or phone.

So it doesn’t happen again

Before a big restart, press Ctrl + Shift + D or ⌘ + Shift + D. Chrome saves every tab in the window to a new bookmarks folder. It’s the simplest backup there is, but you have to remember to do it.

TabOverview does the remembering for you:

Undo. Every close in TabOverview has Undo for 30 seconds.
Closed. Pages and windows you closed stay listed for 30 days, up to 5,000 pages. You can search them.
Your tabs earlier. Lists of what you had open each day stay for 90 days, with one Bring back button for each day.
After a crash. A small local list of your open pages updates about every 25 seconds. If two or more pages are missing when Chrome next starts, Home offers to bring them back, with their windows, pins and groups.

TabOverview’s Home page offering Bring back 5 tabs from last time, above the last tabs. — After a crash or a quit, Home offers to bring your missing pages back. Real screenshot of TabOverview. The sites in it are made up.

It has limits. A crash can lose the last 25 seconds or so of changes, and what you typed into a page and how far you’d scrolled don’t come back. Incognito tabs are never kept.

Questions

Why did all my Chrome tabs disappear?

Usually Chrome closed or crashed, or it’s set to open the New Tab page at startup. Press Ctrl + Shift + T or ⌘ + Shift + T first, then check History under Recently closed. To stop it happening, set On startup to Continue where you left off.

How do I recover all my open tabs after Chrome crashed?

Press Restore if Chrome offers it when it opens. If not, open the three-dot menu, choose History, and pick the window under Recently closed.

Can I get back tabs from a few days ago?

Chrome’s History keeps the pages you visited for 90 days, one page at a time. TabOverview keeps lists of what you had open on each day for 90 days, so you can bring a whole day back at once.

Can I restore Incognito tabs?

No. Chrome’s History doesn’t include Incognito, and TabOverview leaves Incognito out too.