Raise your hand if you frequently close browser tabs by accident.
I’m spending more time than ever in the Google Chrome browser, and my laptop screen is usually full of dozens of open tabs. I don’t know how many times I’ve hit the “X” button on a tab I was trying to switch to. This seems to happen every day. My mouse speed might not be set up right. Maybe I click too much. Or maybe I just know that Ctrl+Shift+T will help me. This keyboard shortcut is my secret weapon, and it has helped me more times than I care to admit.
What is Ctrl+Shift+T (or, for Mac users, Cmd+Shift+T)? I’d say it’s right up there with Ctrl+Z as one of the most important and useful keyboard shortcuts. In fact, it does the same thing: it undoes a mistake. In particular, making the mistake of closing a browser tab or window by accident. The easiest way to get back to a browser tab you accidentally closed is to press Ctrl+Shift+T.
Let’s go over how to use it and all the other ways to get back lost browser tabs. And don’t forget to check out our list of the best keyboard shortcuts for Windows 11, the most important keyboard shortcuts for Mac, and a Google Chrome trick that will organize all your tabs for you.
There are four ways to open closed Google Chrome tabs again.
When you close a tab or window in Google Chrome, you have a few options for getting it back. Note, though, that you can’t bring back closed tabs when you’re browsing in incognito mode.
1. Keyboard Shortcut Technique
A keyboard shortcut is the fastest way to bring back a single tab that you accidentally closed. Use Ctrl+Shift+T on a PC. Use Cmd+Shift+T on a Mac. If you need to bring back more than one tab or a tab you closed a while ago, just keep pressing Ctrl+Shift+T. Your tabs will come back in the order they were closed. Bonus: If you close your whole browser window by accident, you can just open a new Chrome window and use the keyboard shortcut to open everything all at once. This is a great trick for when you have to close your browser or restart your computer because of a system update.
2. Use of the Browser’s History
Your Chrome history also keeps track of the tabs you’ve closed recently.
Chrome gives you a few ways to look at your browser’s history. One way is to use the Ctrl+H keyboard shortcut. Another way is to click the three lines in the top right corner of your browser, which opens a menu, and then click History. A third way is to type “chrome:/history” into your address bar and press enter.
No matter how you get to your browser history, once you’re there, you can see all the websites and tabs you’ve visited in reverse order. When you click on a result, it will open again. By clicking on the hamburger menu, you can also see a list of recently closed tabs that you can choose to open again.
3. Tab Search Technique
Have you ever looked at the little arrow in your Chrome tab bar that points down? It’s right next to the icons for minimizing, maximizing, and closing your windows in Windows. This icon is Chrome’s built-in tab search, which can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A on the keyboard. Tab search shows you a list of all the tabs you have open right now, as well as a list of the tabs you’ve just closed. You can either scroll through the lists to find the tab you want or type a word into the search bar to find it. This is helpful for people who always have a lot of tabs open.
4. Taskbar Method
If you have a Chrome window open or the app is pinned to your taskbar, you can right-click the Chrome icon in the taskbar and see a list of links: Most popular and recently closed. From there, you can click on a tab to bring it back. (Note that Mac doesn’t have these options.)
Method of “Continue where I left off”
There’s a setting in Chrome that makes Ctrl+Shift+T the default way to type. If you turn this feature on, Chrome will automatically reopen the tabs you had open in your last session every time you open the browser. To turn it on, go to Chrome’s settings (also accessible from the hamburger menu) and click “On startup. Choose the option to pick up where you left off.
What about Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and other browsers? The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+T will also work in other browsers (as well as right-clicking the tab bar and selecting Reopen closed tab). Most of the other ways to reopen a tab also work in most browsers, but the names of the menus and the options may be different. On a Mac, the experience is mostly the same, except for the taskbar method.
You can also look through your browser history in both Firefox and Microsoft Edge to find and reopen a tab you accidentally closed. Firefox has a sub-menu called Recent Closed Tabs that is part of the History menu. The History menu in Microsoft Edge has tabs for All, Recently closed, and Tabs from other devices. If you have the sidebar turned on in Opera and have chosen to include History in it, clicking the History icon in the sidebar will also bring up a list of recently closed tabs.
You can also set the other browsers to automatically open the tabs from the last session when you start them up. Go to Settings > General in Firefox and check the box labelled “Open previous windows and tabs at startup. Go to Settings > Start, home, and new tabs in Microsoft Edge. When Edge starts, choose Open tabs from the last session under When Edge starts. And in Opera, go to Settings > On Startup and check the box next to Keep tabs from last session.
