Why Your Pinned Tabs Disappear & How to Fix It

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Co-authored by Nicole Levine, MFA Reviewed by Luigi Oppido

Last Updated: August 27, 2024 Fact Checked

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Opening Specific Tabs at Startup

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Continuing Where You Left Off

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Tips

Are your pinned Chrome tabs disappearing when you restart Chrome? You're not alone! Pinning tabs in Chrome only pins tabs to a single browser window, which makes things tricky if you're using multiple browser windows. This wikiHow article will show you two easy ways to automatically reopen pinned tabs in Chrome.

Restoring Lost Pinned Tabs

Click the Pinned Tabs folder on your bookmarks bar. If you have a lot of bookmarks on the bookmarks bar, click the two arrows >> on the right side of the bar. Double-click each bookmark to reopen the tabs, then right-click each reopened tab and select Pin to repin them.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Opening Specific Tabs at Startup

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1
Close all open tabs except for your pinned tabs. If you still have other tabs open, click the X on each tab that you'd prefer not reopen automatically before you continue.
- The drawback to this method is that Chrome will only reopen these pinned tabs, not other tabs you had open when closing the browser.
The menu icon is the three vertical dots at the top-right corner of Chrome.^{[1]
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You'll see this in the left panel toward the bottom.^{[2]
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This is the last option in the right panel.^{[3]
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Click Use current pages. All pinned tabs now appear in the list. As long as this option is selected, closing and re-opening Chrome will always reopen these pages.^{[4]
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- When Chrome reopens these pages, there's a chance they'll no longer be pinned. Just repin the pages and arrange them as needed.

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Continuing Where You Left Off

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Understand the limitations. The "Continue where you left off" feature tells Chrome to reopen all open tabs, including pinned tabs, each time you close and restart Chrome. However, pinned tabs can be lost if you're using multiple Chrome windows. Here's why:
- With this feature, Chrome reopens the tabs from the Chrome window you closed last, whether pinned or not pinned. Only the tabs from the last Chrome window you closed will reopen the next time you launch Chrome.
- If you're using multiple Chrome windows and close the window that has pinned tabs before closing another window, Chrome will lose your pinned tabs.
- Because it's easy to accidentally close open windows in the wrong order, we'll show you how to bookmark your pinned tabs so you can easily bring them back if lost.
If you haven't already done so, right-click each tab you want to pin and select Pin.^{[5]
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This opens Chrome's bookmark manager.
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Create a new bookmark folder. If you ever accidentally close the window that has pinned tabs before closing another browser window, adding those pinned tabs to a bookmarked folder will make it super easy to bring them back. To create a bookmark folder:^{[6]
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- Click Bookmarks bar in the left panel.
- Click the three vertical dots at the top-right corner of the bookmark list and select Add new folder.
- Type Pinned Tabs and click Save. You can move this folder anywhere by clicking and dragging it to another location in your bookmarks bar.
- Click one of your pinned tabs at the top of Chrome.
- Click the star icon on the right side of the address bar.
- Select the new folder you created and click Done.
- Click each additional pinned tab, click its star icon, and add it to the folder. Repeat until you've added all pinned tabs to this folder.
- Now you can close the bookmark manager (the tab called Bookmarks).
The Chrome menu is the three vertical dots at the top-right corner of Chrome.^{[7]
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You'll see this in the left panel toward the bottom.^{[8]
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If you close this browser window with your tabs still pinned, the tabs will remain pinned the next time you open the browser as long as you close this browser window last.^{[9]
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Restore lost pinned tabs. If you accidentally closed the browser window that had pinned tabs before another browser window, here's what you'll need to do to get those tabs back:
- Click the Pinned Tabs folder on your bookmarks bar. If you have a lot of bookmarks on the bookmarks bar, click the two arrows >> on the right side of the bar.
- Double-click each bookmark to reopen the tabs.
- Right-click each reopened tab and select Pin to repin them.

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Tips

There used to be a few pinned tab extensions in the Chrome web store that made it easy to automatically reopen pinned tabs. Unfortunately, for some reason, Google has labeled all of them as "not following the best practices for Chrome extensions." However, new ones may pop up, so keep an eye on the Chrome Web Store.

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