Closed the wrong tab? In Chrome on Windows or Linux, press Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen the most recently closed tab. Press it again to work backward through recently closed tabs. On a Mac, use Command + Shift + T.
Restore the tab without digging through history
The shortcut is especially useful when a tab was closed by accident or when you close a window and realize one page still mattered. It restores tabs in the order Chrome closed them, so repeated presses can bring back more than one. If the browser was restarted or the page is not in the recent list, open Chrome’s History menu and look for the page there; a tab that was opened in a private Incognito window is not something to rely on restoring from ordinary history.
Keep the rest of your browser moving
A few neighboring shortcuts make tab recovery easier to remember: Ctrl + T opens a new tab; Ctrl + L moves the cursor to the address bar; Ctrl + W closes the current tab; and Ctrl + Tab moves to the next tab. On Mac, use Command for the corresponding shortcuts.
On Windows and Linux, Ctrl + 1 through Ctrl + 8 jumps to a numbered tab, while Ctrl + 9 jumps to the last tab. Shortcut behavior can vary by operating system, and the Mac keyboard uses different keys, so check Google’s current list if a combination does not match.
When it will not work
If the tab was never open in the current Chrome session, or it was a private session, the shortcut may not bring it back. Use history for pages you intentionally visited, or bookmark important work before closing a large session.
It is a small keystroke that can save a search and a few minutes of backtracking—without installing an extension.
Featured image credit: Wilson Afonso from Sydney, Australia on Wikimedia Commons — CC BY 2.0 (license).
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