Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2022 April 28

= April 28 =

When your computer restarts, do your open tabs remain open?
When I search the Internet, I get a new "tab" up at the top of my screen, for every new site or new page that I visit. If I am on the computer all day long, let's (hypothetically) say that I have 50 tabs up there. Let's also say that all 50 of those tabs/pages are important to me. Now ... if my computer were to shut off -- accidentally or intentionally -- would those 50 tabs still be present, when the computer restarted? Or would I have to search for all of those 50 pages, all over again, to access them? Or, is there some setting that I can set to pre-determine what would happen in this scenario? Thanks. If it matters, I have Windows 11. And I use Mozilla Firefox for searching. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:35, 28 April 2022 (UTC)


 * You can make sure Firefox is set to re-open its previous tabs with a setting (General -> Startup -> Open previous windows and tabs). But this isn't a very safe mechanism (it's intended as a timesaver only). The proper mechanism is to use the brower's bookmarks feature (or some online bookmark service, if you prefer). I have, in the past, ended up with a bunch of open tabs (all "stuff I'd like to look at really soon now") that ended up getting lost in some crash or by means of some unknown hotkey mistyping by me. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 20:57, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Generally, upon starting Firefox one of two things can happen depending on the circumstances:
 * If your computer unintentionally shut down or Firefox was force-closed, the first thing you would see upon startup would be a blank screen notifying you of the abrupt closure. You are given the option to start a new session or -- and here's what you're looking for -- to restore your previous tabs.
 * Additionally, if you have properly closed Firefox and would like to restore your session upon startup manually, you can click the menu button at the top right below the X (it looks like three horizontal lines), click History, and click "Restore previous session". Note that any tab pinned will always persist when Firefox is opened/closed properly, regardless of if every other un-pinned tab was closed prior to restarting.
 * Note that these will not always work. If you open a new browser window with nothing in it before you restore your session, Firefox will overwrite what you last did with this new session (including situations where you open nothing at all, so be cautious about when you decide to leave the window blank). Also, something like a power outage may inadvertently wipe the cache or make restoring your session using the first aforementioned method not possible. In that circumstance, should it not be too much of a hassle, you can simply press Ctrl+H or open the History menu yet again and open your previously-browsed tabs one by one. I hope this helped. - Cheers, KoolKidz112   (hit me up)  21:51, 28 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm going to take slight issue with the previous two answers. A computer is a tool to do work.  Furthermore, context is often vital to the work being done.  So I expect my browser to remember my open windows and tabs.  This is not a "timesaver" or something that I'm happy if it only works some of the time.  If there's a power failure, I will no more tolerate losing my open windows than I would tolerate losing hours of unsaved work in my text editor.  But in fact, my text editor does reliably autosave (meaning that I never lose unsaved work in it), and in my experience Firefox does reliably save open windows and tabs.
 * (Some might say that it's my responsibility to save my work periodically, or to bookmark the pages I might want to go back to, but I say: nonsense. I'm the unreliable human; I might forget to.  It's the computer's job to take care of these things reliably, IMO.)
 * In my experience (perhaps contrary to Finlay's), Firefox's ability to preserve open windows and tabs across reboots is extremely reliable. I have kept my sets of open tabs open for many, many years, across not only dozens of reboots and the occasional Firefox crash, but one or two migrations to whole new computers, as well.  (That is, when I've migrated my files from one computer to the next, Firefox's session state files have come along, too.)
 * With that said, though, I must wholeheartedly agree with Finlay's aside about "ending up with a bunch of open tabs... 'to look at really soon now'". A few months ago, I threw in the towel, and summarily discarded most of that yearslong session state, because the number of open tabs was 1452, and it was quite definitely out of hand. —scs (talk) 22:32, 28 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Interesting coincidence. I was just about to ask:  Is there a maximum limit to the number of tabs I can have open?  Or is there a setting I need to "set" for that?   Thanks.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:14, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Back in earlier times there were no tabs, but you could open a new window on Netscape. I remember crashing the computer once 4 windows were opened. The situation has improved since the mid-90s. Those open tabs may consume bandwidth, as running scripts may load more stuff, especially adverts, even if you are not looking at them. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:46, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
 * The answer is yes. However there's no set number as it simply depends on the amount of RAM and processing power your computer has. Once you open up too many tabs, one of 2 things will happen. 1. Your web browser (or all the tabs) will crash. 2. Your computer will freeze up or just crash. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:13, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Fascinating. I suppose ideally for your style of browsing, open tabs should be searchable and sortable, like a special area of the history. When you have hundreds of them, the word "tab" no longer refers to a visible user interface element, and just means item on a list awaiting attention. Card Zero  (talk) 02:51, 29 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm another with a bad habit of leaving hundreds of tabs open, even through reboots – and yes, Firefox does restore them after crashes, except sometimes the last few opened. My housemate insists (without much evidence) that this practice not only slows my computer but burdens our shared modem, which I doubt because Firefox apparently does not load those tabs – let alone burn bandwidth holding them open – until I select them. — One thing I do is Bookmark All, copy the new bookmarks to a text file, and close the tabs en masse; then someday, when I have nothing better to do, run a script that opens URLs at random from such files. —Tamfang (talk) 02:00, 29 April 2022 (UTC)


 * The simple answer is yes. Web browsers like Chrome, Opera GX, and also probably Firefox (though I've never used Firefox myself) are able to detect if the computer that was running the browser abruptly shut off. My guess would be because when you press the shut down button on your computer, it goes through some sort of process that properly shuts down everything before turning off the computer. When your computer suddenly shuts off (by either you holding down the power button or the computer losing power through other means), it's unable to go through that process, so the browsers aren't shut down properly, which probably allows them to "remember" what tabs you had open. I don't know all the nitty-gritty details of how all this works so this is just a guess from my experience. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:10, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Much appreciated. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:58, 5 May 2022 (UTC)