How to recover closed tabs in Chrome and Edge

To recover closed tabs, press Ctrl+Shift+T straight after closing them (Cmd+Shift+T in Chrome and Safari on Mac): Chrome, Edge and Safari reopen the last thing you closed, and pressing it again walks further back. If more time has passed, the page is still in your history. This guide covers both routes in each browser, what you can do after a crash, and how to make sure there is nothing to recover next time.

One caveat first: recovering a tab means reopening its address, not the state of the page. A half-filled form or a page behind a login comes back as if you were opening it from scratch.

1. Reopen the last tab with the keyboard shortcut

It is the fastest route and the one that works almost everywhere. The same shortcut covers a single tab and a whole window:

Browser	Windows and Linux	Mac
Chrome	Ctrl+Shift+T	Cmd+Shift+T
Edge	Ctrl+Shift+T	(Edge’s help only documents Windows)
Safari	—	Cmd+Shift+T

Chrome’s official help puts it plainly: if you accidentally close a tab or window, that shortcut opens it again. Press it repeatedly and you step back through what you closed, newest first. For Safari on Mac, Apple documents the same shortcut for reopening both the last tab and the last window you closed.

If what you closed was a window with twenty tabs, one keystroke brings back the whole window — not twenty keystrokes.

2. Bring back a closed tab group

In Chrome, closing a group with Close group doesn’t delete it: it stays saved and you can open it again. You’ll find it under the More menu (the three dots) > Tab groups, or on the bookmarks bar if it’s visible.

That is the practical difference between closing a group and closing its tabs one by one: the first comes back with its name and colour; the second, only tab by tab. If you work with groups a lot, we cover them in detail in how to organise tabs in Chrome.

3. Search your history for what you closed days ago

When the shortcut no longer reaches — you closed the tab yesterday, or you’ve closed thirty other things since — the page is still in your history:

• Chrome: Ctrl+H (Cmd+Y on Mac), or More > History > History. According to Google’s help, it keeps the pages you visited over the last 90 days.
• Edge: Ctrl+H opens the history pane.

History is searchable by text, so you don’t need the exact address: one word from the title is enough. What you won’t find there are tabs opened in Incognito or a private window, because that mode exists precisely to leave no trace.

4. Recover closed tabs on Android

Chrome on Android has no keyboard shortcut, but the three-dot menu gives you two routes:

• Recent tabs, with what you closed recently. Tap the tab or window and it reopens.
• History, just as on desktop, with the pages from the last 90 days.

If the menu isn’t at the top right, it’s because your address bar sits at the bottom: swipe up on it to reveal the menu.

5. Restore tabs after a crash

A power cut, a forced update or a browser that hangs isn’t the same as closing a tab, but the fix is almost identical:

1. Open the browser and, before touching anything, press the shortcut from step 1. If the last thing lost was the whole window, the whole window comes back.
2. If it doesn’t, go to your history and reopen the pages you need by hand. Slower, but the addresses are there.
3. Tell the browser to reopen what you had. In Chrome it lives under More > Settings > On startup > Continue where you left off. With that on, closing and reopening the browser stops being a risk.

That setting helps, but it doesn’t cover everything: if the profile is wiped, you switch computers or the browser is reinstalled, what you had open doesn’t travel with you.

6. Save the window so there’s nothing to recover

Everything above is rescue work. The underlying problem is that an open tab isn’t stored anywhere: it exists only as long as its window does. So the reliable way not to lose a set of tabs is to save it before you close it.

With the tabteca extension you save the whole window as a named session in your account — from the toolbar icon, from the context menu, or with Ctrl+Shift+Y (Cmd+Shift+Y on Mac). You can also add the window to an existing session instead of creating a new one. The extension runs on Chromium-based browsers: Chrome, Edge, Brave and Opera. Because the session lives in your account rather than on disk, you can open it later from the web app in any browser.

The full procedure, including when saving is worth it and when it isn’t, is in how to save and restore tab sessions. And if the real issue is that you never close anything, start with too many tabs open.

Frequently asked questions

What is the shortcut to reopen a closed tab? Ctrl+Shift+T on Windows and Linux, and Cmd+Shift+T on Mac. It works in Chrome, in Edge on Windows and in Safari on Mac, and each press reopens the next thing you closed, in reverse order.

Can I recover tabs closed in an Incognito window? No. Incognito doesn’t keep history, so once the window is closed there is nothing to go back to. If you’ll need those pages again, save them before closing.

Why doesn’t the shortcut bring back yesterday’s tabs? Because it walks back through what you closed recently, and if you’ve closed plenty of other things since, yesterday’s tabs are a long way back. That’s what history is for: search it with a word from the page title.

How do I recover closed tabs in Chrome on Android? From the three-dot menu, under Recent tabs, which lists what you closed recently. If more time has passed, use History, which keeps the pages from the last 90 days.

Does the tabteca extension work in Firefox or Safari? No. It runs on Chromium-based browsers: Chrome, Edge, Brave and Opera. Whatever you save with it can be opened later from the tabteca web app in any browser.