Ever happened to you that you have accidentally closed the Firefox browser and lost a number of tabs opened? Whether you have clicked the closed button by mistake or your computer has been restarted unexpectedly, your open tabs can be restored using various simple tricks.
As you know, closing the browser will eventually close all the tabs, but closing the individual tabs doesn’t interfere with other tabs. You can quickly reopen your last closed tab or restore tabs from your last browsing session if you haven’t closed the browser yet. But what if you have already closed it?
Why reopen closed tabs?
The reason you reopen a closed tab often depends on why you closed it. Sometimes, you may accidentally close one tab instead of another, then you will have to reopen that particular tab to continue browsing.
In other instances, you may open a webpage from a previous browsing session to continue what you were doing, such as researching, or reading information.
Below are various ways compiled that can be useful in case of such scenarios.
Mouse method
This is one of the common methods you can use to reopen a closed tab:
- Right-click on the browser’s tab bar.
- Select “Reopen closed tab“.
- Continue using your most recently closed tab.
Keyboard method
Firefox also shares the same keyboard shortcut as Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 9.
Just press “Ctrl + Shift + T” to open the recently closed tab(s). Repeat the process to open all the closed tabs one by one till you find all the ones you want to reopen.
Recent history method
Review this method to help you reopen recently closed tabs in your web browser:
- Select the button with three lines in the upper right corner of your browser window, which generates a drop-down menu.
- Navigate to “History” option.
- Choose the “Recently closed” option to look at the last tabs you exited.
- Select the recently closed webpage you want to view.
- Go on and open the pages to continue browsing.
Browser history method
This method can help you find closed webpages in your browser history. This generates a list of web pages you’ve viewed over an extended period. If other devices sync with your PC, you may also view tabs you’ve closed in the same browser on those devices. Here’s how to open closed tabs using your browser history:
- Select the button with three lines in the upper right corner of your browser window, which generates a drop-down menu.
- Navigate to the “History” option.
- Select “Manage history” at the bottom of the menu to open your entire browser history. This will open in another window under the “Library”
- Click on the webpage you want to view to reopen it.
Sidebar History method
If you use browsers like Firefox, this method can help you find important closed tabs quickly. Follow the steps below to reopen closed tabs using the sidebar option:
- Click on the three lines on the right corner of the browser
- Select the customize toolbar option
- Now drag the sidebars option to the toolbar or the overflow menu
- Click on it to display the history on either side of the screen you choose
- This will take you to recently closed tabs for you to select which ones you want to open. The sidebar lists all visits chronologically by default; a click displays the list of visited sites, each with its page title and favicon. Click on an entry with the left mouse button to load it in a new tab in Firefox. Right-clicking will also provide additional options:
- Open the site in a new window or a new private window.
- Bookmark the page.
- Copy the page URL.
- Delete the page entry in the browsing history.
- Forget about the entire site.
Use third party extensions
Using extensions like OneTab comes in very handy when you want to close the Firefox browser, or restart your computer because of various reasons prompting you to. When you click the OneTab button, it bundles all your existing tabs into a list.
To access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or at all once. Apart from this, you can export or import your tabs as a list of URLs, or drag-and-drop tabs in the OneTab list to rearrange them.
Undo Close Tab extensions another handy extension that can help by automatically opening the last closed tab. Simply click on it to automatically open the last closed tab.
Right clicking the add-on icon will list all the previously closed tabs. You can directly open any of those previous tabs by clicking on them.
By default, it will display this list of closed tabs from all the Firefox windows. If you want to change it so that the tabs listed are only from the active/current window, right click on the icon and choose Manage Extension.
Overall, this is a handy extension when trying to restore previously closed tabs without searching for them from browser history.
Consider these tips when reopening closed tabs in your web browser:
Choose a method based on the tab you plan to open. The mouse method and keyboard method automatically generate the most recently closed tab. Using these two methods will open tabs in the order you had closed them.
Review the directions for the method you choose. If the method you’re using isn’t functioning properly, consider reviewing the directions to ensure you’re following them exactly. Example here is where the mouse method works best when you either select the empty tab bar or the plus sign.
Bookmark frequently used tabs. Bookmarking the tabs often used can help you quickly reopen them when you accidentally close them. This will increase the user’s online browsing productivity by reducing the time they spend typing in web addresses or search terms.
Conclusion
Accidentally closing tabs can cause a lot of stress mainly when it dawns on you that you have to repeat the entire process of searching the web page and starting from scratch. You do not have to go through all of that to reopen a tab or window.
After I started using the Firefox undo close tab feature, I do not worry about accidentally closing an important tab ever again. Now, I can reopen Firefox’s recently closed tabs in no time.
If you have forgotten which tab you are looking for, then you also check your browsing history. In this article, you will have learnt how to reopen closed tabs in the most convenient way. By going through the browsing history, you would find the data of all the sites you have visited over the past days or weeks.