Have you ever clicked the wrong button by accident, and suddenly lost everything you were working on?
It happens to me all the time, particularly when I’m browsing the web. The number of times I’ve accidentally clicked on the cross in the top right and closed my entire internet window (usually with several different pages open) without meaning to, is a lot higher than I’d like to admit.
But all is not lost! Thankfully, web browsers have a really handy option as part of the “History” feature, where you can restore the browsing session you had open previously.
You can access the History to find websites you’ve previously visited in your web browser on any device – smartphones, tablets or computers – but this particular tip is mainly for computers (both Macs and Windows) as the smartphone and tablet versions of web browsers work slightly differently.
So I’ll talk you through how to do it on three of the most commonly used web browsers – Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Safari.
On Microsoft Edge, after you open the app you want to click on the three dots menu button in the top right, then click on “History” in the menu that appears. It’ll show you a long list of all the sites you’ve visited recently – if you just want to go back to one of those sites, you can click on it in the list.
But if you had several tabs open, and you want them all back to the way they were before, click on “Recently closed” near the top of the History box. You’ll see a list of sites you’ve visited, but some of them will have what looks like a little black Play symbol (like a triangle pointing to the right) next to them, and an icon of one square on top of another. Click on that squares icon to reopen the window you had previously.
On Google Chrome, after you open the app you want to click on the three dots menu button in the top right, then hover the mouse over “History” in the menu that appears. A side menu will pop out – look for any options that say “2 tabs” or “5 tabs” (or however many you had open) and hover the mouse over each one.
When you do that, another side menu will pop out (possibly to the right this time, just to confuse you!) and you can check which tabs it’s referring to. When you find the one you were looking for, click on “Restore window” to have them all open again.
On Macs, open Safari and click on “History” in the top bar. Click on “Reopen Last Closed Window”, or you can hover the mouse over “Recently Closed” to see a list of the individual sites you’ve visited.