How to Bring Back “Save Tabs and Quit” Feature in Mozilla Firefox?

For some unknown reasons, Mozilla has removed “Save and Quit” feature from Firefox 4.0 and later versions. In earlier versions, if you opened more than one tabs in Firefox and clicked on Close button, it used to show a dialog box to save your tabs and quit the window.

Save_Tabs_Quit_Feature_Firefox.png

In Firefox 4.0 and later versions, it no longer allows you to save the tabs. Whenever you click on Close button, it only warns you with a dialog box but doesn’t provide any button to save the tabs.

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Mozilla_Firefox_Close_Multiple_Tabs_Confirmation_Prompt.png

Using this small trick, you can bring back the good old feature in Mozilla Firefox 4.0 and later versions:

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll confirm, click on I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

Access_Mozilla_Firefox_About_Config.png

2. Now type quitwarning in the Filter box, it’ll show following boolean key:

browser.showQuitWarning

3. The entry “browser.showQuitWarning” would be set to false. Double-click on it or right-click on it and select toggle. It’ll set its value to true.

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4. Now whenever you close multiple tabs, Firefox will ask you to save the tabs and quit.

Published in: Mozilla Firefox

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

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  1. I have tried to activate the safe tab feature back on my browser and “browser.showQuitWarning” option is not there for me to click on and change to true.
    I am surprised this has changed today, yesterday was fine.I have Firefox ver. 3.6.17. I have not downloaded Version 4. What else can I do to try to get the Save Tabs and Quit feature back on?

  2. I use Firefox 15.0.1, used your steps and it immediately worked..many thanks my man..may you continue with your work, helping people like me.. Thank you

  3. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU x 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000!!!

  4. My preference is set to “true” and yet it does not give me the option, and I lose all tabs. Happens intermittently.

  5. Great direction makes tweaking easy for all, the save TABS fix has done its work for me. Thanks.

  6. I accidentily checked the Do not ask next time box on the confirm close window and then clicked on the save and quit button but I want to go back and get the confirmation window again.How can I do that?

    Thanks.

  7. Nope that doesn’t work. 🙁 I need to re-enable the Quite Firefox window even though I have enabled it in Firefox v4.0.There might be a way of getting around it.I will copy and modify the prefs.js file from my dad’s laptop and obviously back-up the prefs.js on my pc just incase and replace it with the modified one from my dad’s pc and see if that works.

  8. [edit] that did not work at all. The settings for that are somewhere else.Did not fix the problem. 🙁

  9. cant put in my password in to log to any site .A key comes up asking me do I want to reset or something but when I press keys it clears my log in name . any idea what i have done

  10. I have FF 27.0 and have always had the ‘quit and save’ option on closing FF. By
    by mistake I did a reset. I have been having an awful time getting the browser to look/act like it did before the reset but its almost the way I want it. I noticed the ‘quit and save’ did not work so followed your instructions but I don’t get any pop up box to save and quit,etc. However when I re-open FF it has all the tabs that were opened last time. I really don’t want that either. Sometimes I want to save what I have tabbed and sometimes I don’t. I guess I will have to start deleting tabs I don’t want to see before I close FF.

  11. This is great to know about…just did this, and hopefully will prevent future loss of work when I have multiple tabs open…I use a LOT of tabs…including my Homepage…which brings up my question:

    Is there a way to change configuration so if I accidentally click on the “home” icon at the top right of the browser when I’m trying to click the down-arrow button that is *right* next to it,
    (this does happen 2 times a year at least and is a huge pain) and then it opens *another* 30 or 40 tabs (whatever number I have in my homepage at that time…which is many..yes I know how to create html pages as bookmarks but too dynamic..too many projects at once..this works for me, trust me) it even happened once or when I’m trying to close a tab but I had done an “f11” to put into or out of full screen and the browser had a 2? second delay and moved up or down at just the wrong time and mouse when right on House icon…usually I think it’s the down loading down arrow,

    and I’m careful and it’s ok 97.5% of the time but a few times a year…a ton new tabs open…loading each one….very slow…and then you have to close them all down

    All I want is: “ARE YOU SURE?” when I click on the home button..or at least if one has more than one (or more than 5 say) tabs set as one’s Homepage, then have it ask “are you sure?” so I can click “No” (make that the default, obviously, make the Yes button small etc)

    Can this be done? OR could it be done with config or an add-on? I searched without success in firefox add-ons online, a while back..

    thanks!

  12. With multiple windows open, using FF v38.0.5, this only worked for me on the last window to close. I am able to use reopen all windows retaining tabs by closing FF from within Task Manager [ctrl] [alt] [del].

  13. I was wrong above. Here is a correct method that is part of the FF design. Works with multiple windows open. You can’t use X to s/d. Use [file][exit].

  14. I have done this any many other steps suggested on other sites and I still can not get the save & Quit option back.

  15. Tried this option, in fact the option is set to True long back but after recent upgrade to current version of firefox , the “Save and Quit” option is not working

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