How to Re-Open Closed Tab in Android Chrome

Accidentally closing a tab on Chrome is one of those little things that can make daily life a tad more challenging. If it’s a particularly important tab, you likely enter a desperate rush to reopen the tab as soon as possible. We know this because we’ve been there, and this is not a rare occurrence for Chrome users.

Luckily, most browsers nowadays already come with a solution to mitigate this issue, and Android’s Chrome is not an exception. Initially absent from mobile devices, the feature to instantly reopen a tab is ultimately deemed necessary as the popularity and practicality of mobile browsers can rival—if not surpass—their desktop counterparts. In other words, accidentally closing a tab is not a problem exclusive to desktops users, and mobile users can just as easily accidentally close tabs.

How to Re-Open Closed Tab in Android Chrome

Before we begin, make sure that you have the most up-to-date version of Google Chrome on your phone. The feature to instantly reopen tabs has already been available for years now, so it’s more of a compatibility issue than anything so you can be sure that everything will work correctly.

Once it’s done, do the following:

1. Run your Chrome app, then open a new tab.
2. Afterwards, visit any page you like, then close the tab immediately.
3. You should see a prompt at the bottom of the screen showing you can Undo closed tab.
4. Tap the Undo button to re-open the tab you’ve just closed.

Repeating these steps multiple times might prove useful so that you can get used to it. Otherwise, make sure that you keep the sudden appearance of this button in mind, as the undo option only appears for a few seconds before it goes away.

“What if I missed the “Undo” button?”

Since the button appears for a very brief time, it would be no surprise if you fail to hit it if you’re not paying super close attention. Don’t worry though, as you can still re-open newly closed tabs using the Recent Tabs feature. Here’s how it’s done.

1. Open the Chrome app if you haven’t already, then tap the vertical three dots icon at the top-right.
2. From the list of options, choose Recent Tabs.
3. From here, you can see the list of tabs that are recently closed. Simply tap any page to open a recently closed tab.

Pretty easy, isn’t it?

Now, you don’t have to worry about doing something that might lead to unintentionally removing those precious Chrome tabs. Just remember that the option to re-open tabs exist, and now you know how!

Reopen Tabs from Days or Weeks Ago

The Recent Tabs on Chrome only lists pages you’ve closed in the last 24 hours, hence the name “Recent”. If you wish to open tabs from days, weeks, or even months ago, you need to apply a different method, which is through your History. To do this, you need to:

1. Open the Chrome app, then tap on the same vertical three dots icon as before.
2. This time, select History from the presented options.
3. Afterwards, you should see a similar list to the one provided by Recent Tabs, albeit longer. The list also writes out the date of when you visited these pages.
4. To restore any of these pages, again, you simply need to tap on the tab you want from the list.

More Info on Instant Re-Open Closed Tab

One thing that’s great about Chrome for Android is the “recently closed tab caching”. What this means is that when you successfully hit the Undo button, you can instantly view everything on the website page instead of reloading them it over again. Chrome is able to do this by freezing every element on the page and storing them in a special cache for a short period. Thanks to this, instead of having to literally connect to the website’s server and load the page from the beginning, you can reopen the page as if it was never closed in the first place.

With that said, this feature only works ONLY if you can tap the Undo button in time. This is the case because the temporary data is stored in the cache only for as long as the Undo button ison the screen. If you reopen the tab using the Recent Tabs feature, then, unfortunately, you have to reload the page from the ground up.

Re-Open Recently Closed Tabs from Other Devices

Not only can you re-open a tab from your own mobile device, but you can open tabs that you’ve closed from other devices. To be able to do this, however, you need to have the syncing option turned on for both of your devices, e.g., your phone and computer. To turn sync on, the method is pretty similar whether you’re using a PC or mobile phone.

1. On both your phone and PC, tap or click on the vertical three dots icon, then select Settings.
2. Under the You and Google section on PC, click on Turn on sync… button, then follow the instruction.
3. On the mobile device, tap on Sync and Google services, then enable Sync your Chrome data.

With sync turned on, you can easily open closed tabs from other devices. On your mobile phone, simply navigate to Recent Tabs to see recent tabs from your computer as well as your phone. On PC, hit Ctrl + H while Chrome is open, then click on three horizontal bar icon at the top right. Afterward, select Tabs from other devices.

Bottom Line

It’s great that having the ability to instantly re-open tabs is available on your phone. Back in the day when Chrome for Android was still in its early stages, people had a hard time due to the lack of this feature, even though many people used Chrome on their phones. Luckily, this feature is no longer limited to only PC users, and you can instantly re-open tabs on Android. There are also other additional features including a special cache to store temporary page’s files as well as devices syncing, which make things even easier.