Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Lost previous session & history not showing visited tabs - only closed ones

  • 2 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Firefox has a frustrating habit of closing windows and not restoring them properly. I had 2 windows with a multiple tabs open in each and Firefox will successfully reopen both windows until it doesn't. I tried all the methods with going into history or using the previous.json file in sessionrestore-backups but that file only had 1 window. Now I'm trying to use my browser history to see which websites I visited but all that shows up are the closed tabs - not the windows or the websites I was on before the tab was closed.

Where can I find full browsing information to restore my lost tabs? Alternatively I heard before Firefox updates it creates a snapshot of tabs/windows. How can I access this as a backup?

I dislike Chrome, but it honestly is much better at saving previous sessions.

Firefox has a frustrating habit of closing windows and not restoring them properly. I had 2 windows with a multiple tabs open in each and Firefox will successfully reopen both windows until it doesn't. I tried all the methods with going into history or using the previous.json file in sessionrestore-backups but that file only had 1 window. Now I'm trying to use my browser history to see which websites I visited but all that shows up are the closed ''tabs'' - not the windows or the websites I was on before the tab was closed. Where can I find full browsing information to restore my lost tabs? Alternatively I heard before Firefox updates it creates a snapshot of tabs/windows. How can I access this as a backup? I dislike Chrome, but it honestly is much better at saving previous sessions.

All Replies (2)

more options

A hotkey or a drop-down menu, choose whichever method works for you to reopen a recently closed tab in Chrome.

► If the tab has just been closed, press Ctrl + Shift + T (on Windows) or Cmd + Shift + T (on macOS). The last closed tab will instantly reopen in a new browser tab. If you perform this keyboard shortcut again, the tab that was closed before will reopen.

► If the tab was closed long before other tabs; click on the three vertical dots at the top right of the window. From the menu that appears, choose History. Immediately a sub-menu appears. It contains a section called Recently Closed in which are listed all the tabs you have closed during your session.

more options

Use one of these to close Firefox if you are currently doing that by clicking the close X on the Firefox Title bar, especially if you have multiple windows open to prevent losing tabs in unnoticed windows.

  • "3-bar" menu button -> Exit (Power button)
  • Windows: File -> Exit
  • Mac: Firefox -> Quit Firefox
  • Linux: File -> Quit

See also: