Habits the browser taught you · habit 03 of 40

Restoring the tabs

The browser closed, or the machine did, and everything came back. It is the single most reassuring thing a browser does, and it is the reason nobody dreads a crash any more.

The habit

You let the browser put back what was open, or you press the shortcut that reopens the tab you just closed.

Why it is automatic

This one was taught by loss. Anyone who used a computer before session restore remembers the feeling of a browser vanishing with everything in it, and remembers that nothing could be done about it. When the feature arrived it was pure relief, and relief is an effective teacher. Closing a window stopped being a decision.

It also removed the need to think about what a session is. Closing the browser used to be an act with consequences, so people made a mental note of what they had open. Now the browser holds the note, and the note is better than the one a person would have made.

The last piece is the shortcut. Reopening the last closed tab is a two key reflex that lives in the hands rather than the head, and hands do not check what they are reopening. It gets used constantly to recover a page shut by accident, which is what it is for.

What it actually does here

A session is a file. While the browser runs it writes and rewrites a record of every open window and tab, including addresses and often the scroll position. The writing is continual so that a crash loses as little as possible, which means the file is current rather than stale. It sits in the profile folder beside everything in what the browser remembers.

Restoring is not replay. It is a fresh set of requests, made at the moment of restoring, for the addresses in that file. The request goes out over whatever network the machine now has, from whatever browser is doing the restoring, at a time you did not choose. Ten minutes later and ten hours later look identical to the file.

The restore can also happen somewhere else. With sync on, open tabs appear on other devices as a list you can tap, and a tab list is a list of addresses regardless of which screen it lands on. A machine reinstalled and signed back in can produce a session nobody expected to see again.

Then there is the plain version, which needs no attacker at all. The browser opens, restores what it had, and a page is on screen in front of whoever is in the room before anyone has touched anything. Presentations and handed over laptops all start with the browser opening. What is around the screen then is the subject of the room around you.

What a restore actually is

The browser is not remembering a page. It is keeping a shopping list and going back to the shop. Nothing of the page survives in any meaningful sense. What survives is the address, which is the part identifying where you were, and which is precisely the part worth not keeping.

This is why closing a tab and closing the browser feel similar but are not. Closing a tab moves its address into a recently closed queue kept for the undo shortcut. Closing the browser writes the whole set into the session file. Quitting deliberately does not always clear either one.

The gap between closing and reopening

Every risk on this page lives in that gap. Two seconds, when you reopen a tab shut by accident, is close to harmless. A week, across a reinstall, on a machine since lent to somebody, is a different thing built out of the same feature. The browser treats both the same way because it has no means of telling them apart.

Undo close

A short queue of recently closed tabs, kept in memory and offered by shortcut and by menu.

Startup restore

The whole previous set, read from the session file when the browser next launches.

Crash restore

The same file, offered explicitly because the browser knows it did not shut down cleanly.

Synced tabs

The open list published to other devices on the same account, browsable from any of them.

What to do instead

The aim is that closing the window becomes an ending rather than a pause, which is one setting and one habit rather than a change in how you browse.

1. Set the startup behaviour to a blank page rather than continue where you left off, on any profile used for this.
2. Close tabs individually before closing the window, so the set written out is small and dull.
3. Turn off tab syncing, and check what other devices still list rather than assuming the switch is retroactive.
4. Quit the browser properly at the end rather than leaving it running or letting the machine sleep with it open.
5. Where the browser offers to clear on exit, enable it, then check the next launch is genuinely empty.

How to notice you did it anyway

A restore leaves an obvious trail, because the whole point of the feature is to be findable again afterwards.

• Open the recently closed list from the history menu and read all of it rather than the first entry.
• Restart the browser once, on purpose, and watch what it puts on screen before touching anything.
• On any device signed into the same account, look at the tabs from other devices list.
• Check the startup setting itself, since an update or a profile import can put it back to the default.
• If the browser offers to restore a session you do not recognise, read the list before deciding, then decline.

What readers ask about this habit