My job often requires me to switch from Windows to Mac and vice versa, which means it's easy to get confused about the differences between the two platforms. For example, I always forget that the Close button works differently on the two platforms. On a Mac, it usually hides the window. But on PC, it gets rid of it completely. So imagine my annoyance when I recently booted up my Windows PC and unexpectedly closed Firefox (which had 11 open tabs). Restoring these tabs is easy, if a bit tedious, and I've found some helpful methods to speed up the process.
One keyboard shortcut to restore them all
The easiest and fastest way to restore a tab is to use a single keyboard shortcut. On Windows, this is Ctrl-Shift-T . On a Mac, it's Command-Shift-T . If you have closed or quit your browser, you can open it again and use this shortcut to restore all your open tabs.
Restore tabs with a few more clicks
If the shortcut doesn't work, you can try other methods to restore the tabs. In Chrome (or any other Chromium browser), click the three-dot icon in the upper right corner and go to History > X Tabs > Restore Window . Under the History menu, you will see a submenu that contains the number of tabs you had open in the previous session. Clicking into the menu displays the option to restore all content.
In Firefox, you can click the three horizontal lines button in the upper right corner and go to History > Restore Previous Session to restore all tabs.
Set up your browser to restore open tabs
The easiest way to restore tabs is to ask the browser to open previously closed tabs every time it is launched. In Chrome (and other Chromium browsers) you can do this by pasting chrome://settings/onStartup into the address bar, pressing Enter, and choosing to continue where you left off .
Firefox uses a similar process. Open about:preferences#general in the address bar and check Open previous windows and tabs under the "Launch" subheading.
