Backing up Tabs?

[kmand]

For various reasons I lose my tabs from time to time (browser crash, machine crash, etc).

I'm running on Linux. 

Is there any way for me to save my current tabs and reload them at a later date?

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

Browser/machine crashes should not cause you to lose your open tabs; it should prompt you to reload them next time you run chrome. Can you reproduce this? If so, look for a relevant bug or file a new one on http://new.crbug.com/

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[Joao da Silva]

You can try Ctrl+Shift+T to restore a closed tab/window.

If you want to save the current tabs and open them later after closing the browser, you can right-click the tab bar and bookmark all tabs as a folder. You can then right-click this folder and open all tabs (or just middle-click).

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[Zachary “Gamer_Z.” Yaro]

I do not think OP was asking about how to report bugs, open recently closed tabs, save tabs between sessions, or to hear about Chrome's stability.  Correct me if I am wrong, kmand, but I believe you were asking about saving the list of currently open tabs to some external location on the off-chance something bad happened.  IIRC, they are stored in a file in your Chrome data directory, but it has been a while since I looked through those files, so it would be helpful if someone with a bit more knowledge could chime in with a more concrete answer.

Thanks,
—Zachary “Gamer_Z.” Yaro

On Aug 1, 2012 4:41 AM, "Joao da Silva" <joaod...@chromium.org> wrote:

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

If you're going to complain at people on the OP's behalf for giving
advice because you don't think it's what they wanted, at least also
include the right answer instead of saying you don't know either. :)

My point was that Chrome already *has* a mechanism to back up your
open tabs to deal with browser/machine crashes, and if this isn't
working then that's a problem that should be investigated and fixed.
Not everyone knows about every feature of every piece of software they
use, so may not realise that behaviour they are seeing is not how it's
supposed to work.

Bookmarking all open tabs as a folder, as Joao said, is the easiest
way to do this manually, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth
knowing that it's supposed to do it automatically.

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[kmand]

Let me clarify my original posting.

I am aware that even after an irregular shutdown of either the browser or system, on restart chromium should give the regrets message and ask if you want to reopen the tabs that were open at time of failure.

In fact this usually works. It just doesn't always work and I've been caught too many times. I'm usually quite aggressive at submitting bugs, but this occurs irregularly and is not something that I can give a reproducible sample case for.

I was only vaguely aware of the bookmark all tabs. Since it has been suggested I've tried it. Its not quite the same as saving the tabs. It just saves a bookmark for the current url at each tab, and not the "history" of each tab, so this is no "back" when they are reopened.

Again, I run on Linux and to be fair I am not running the most stable builds. I update to nightlies from time to time. 

I have looked in the ./config/chromium/Default directory and see a "Current Tabs" and "Last Tabs" file. On the occasions when chromium comes up without its previous tabs, Current is tiny and Last is large.

If I try to restart with "Last" replacing "Current" I still get no tabs, and Current is again tiny.

I presume "Last" was corrupted in some way and rejected. Thats why I was looking for some way to save tabs from a safe state.

[Tibor]

Have you looked at "Continue where I left off" setting?

Beware that it might save information you don't want to be saved.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/chromium-discuss/jShy5nODrpo/discussion

[kmand]

On Thursday, August 2, 2012 5:39:35 AM UTC-4, Tibor wrote:

Have you looked at "Continue where I left off" setting?

 Yes, of course this is set, and I do get my tabs back most of the time. I was looking for a way to save them for the times that something goes wrong.

[Evans Turner]

I also lose tabs sometimes in Windows. I usually have multiple profiles open at once, and occasionally have 2-3 windows open with my primary profile (need something like Firefox tab groups!).

When my computer crashed today and had to be restarted, I allowed it to restore the session for my main profile. I started browsing, opening and closing a dozen tabs or so. Then I remembered about the tabs I lost from the other 2 windows of the same profile. I opened a new tab and clicked "recently closed" ...but my 30mins of activity had already pushed-off the entries that would have allowed me to restore the other windows. :(

I would also like a save-state feature!

-Evans

[PhistucK]

If I may ask, why are you using Chromium nightlies and not Google Chrome dev or something along these lines?

☆PhistucK

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[kmand]

On Saturday, August 4, 2012 3:56:59 AM UTC-4, PhistucK wrote:

If I may ask, why are you using Chromium nightlies and not Google Chrome dev or something along these lines?

☆Phistuc

At least for Linux the dev is pretty old (April) and doesn't have the  "other devices" feature that lets you open tabs from other instances.

[PhistucK]

http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/viewer shows that the currentl Linux dev channel was actually released three or four days ago (like the other platforms).

You can download the latest dev channel from here -

http://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/#TOC-Linux

☆PhistucK

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[Yuvi]

Hey,

I just published a Chrome extension that creates automatically backups of your opened windows and tabs, and let you restore them when you need.

You can check it out here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-backup-%26-restore/dehocbglhkaogiljpihicakmlockmlgd?utm_source=webstore-app&utm_medium=awesome-new-tab-page

Yuvi

DroidAhead

http://www.droidahead.com

[David Godshall]

I was hoping kmand's relatively simple question would be answered; my interpretation of it was "where is the open tab information stored in a Linux environment so I can back that information up outside of Chrome, and restore it in the rare case Chrome for whatever reason doesn't."  Yes, one can try to report a bug, and yes one can manually save tabs if one thinks to do so, or install an extension to back them up, but those are things to do if you know ahead of time that Chrome is going to fail in opening the tabs, rather than when it is unpredictable.  Presumably kmand intends to set up some kind of automatic periodic backup process as a backup to Chrome's regular mechanism.

In my case I had a system upgrade issue, ended up installing Linux on a new drive and copying my home directory over.  I was hoping when I started Chrome my tabs would still come up but they didn't, and I wanted to know how Chrome keeps track of that in case of there is still some way to recover the open tab information from my old drive.  Knowing how and where Chrome stores that information would be very helpful.

David

On Friday, August 3, 2012 9:50:33 AM UTC-4, kmand wrote:

[Pavel Ivanov]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:10 PM, David Godshall <amig...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was hoping kmand's relatively simple question would be answered; my
> interpretation of it was "where is the open tab information stored in a
> Linux environment so I can back that information up outside of Chrome, and
> restore it in the rare case Chrome for whatever reason doesn't." Yes, one
> can try to report a bug, and yes one can manually save tabs if one thinks to
> do so, or install an extension to back them up, but those are things to do
> if you know ahead of time that Chrome is going to fail in opening the tabs,
> rather than when it is unpredictable. Presumably kmand intends to set up
> some kind of automatic periodic backup process as a backup to Chrome's
> regular mechanism.
>
> In my case I had a system upgrade issue, ended up installing Linux on a new
> drive and copying my home directory over. I was hoping when I started
> Chrome my tabs would still come up but they didn't, and I wanted to know how
> Chrome keeps track of that in case of there is still some way to recover the
> open tab information from my old drive. Knowing how and where Chrome stores
> that information would be very helpful.

I believe I was able to restore my tabs this way. But the trick was
that profile should be copied after starting Chrome once. I.e. install
Chrome, start it, go through the first start screens, close Chrome,
delete created profile directory, copy the restored profile directory,
start Chrome again.

Alternatively if you've logged in into Chrome and synchronized
everything then when you install Chrome on the new machine you'll be
able to access all your open tabs through "Other Devices" link on the
New Tab page.


Pavel

[David Godshall]

Thanks for the suggestion.  Looking more carefully, I realized I had Google Chrome on my old system, and Chromium on my new systems, so Chromium wasn't picking up anything from my old profile.  Copying ~/.cache/google-chrome and ~/.config/google-chrome from my old drive to ~/.cache/chromium and ~/.config/chromium respectively worked.

I still would be interested in knowing exactly what file or files the remembered tabs are stored in, and if it would be possible to copy only those specific files from a backup or old drive in order to restore tabs in the unlikely event Chrome or Chromium can't.

David

[Von Fugal]

I can't speak for the OP, but this is exactly what I was looking for when I found this thread. AWESOME! Thanks!

[Nigra Truo]

SHOULDN'T, but does in fact happen. I lost all my tabs about 10 times in the last 5 years and we are talking about A LOT OF TABS. I'm getting sick and tired of this and will have to back them up manually.

[ellison...@gmail.com]

I lost a ton of tabs just now. Why Chrome crashed as I was reopening from recently closed. How is it that Opera solved this years ago, and chrome still has no reliable method of restoring after a crash? FFS even Firefox has sessions! FIX IT!