How to Restore “Close Multiple Tabs” Warning Message (Confirmation Prompt) in Mozilla Firefox?

If you use Mozilla Firefox web browser, you might have noticed that if you open more than one tab and click on Close button, the browser shows a warning message box telling you that you are about to close multiple tabs and asks for your confirmation “Are you sure you want to continue” as shown in following screenshot:

If you look carefully, the message box also contains a checkbox “Warn me when I attempt to close multiple tabs“. If you accidentally or intentionally disabled/unchecked the checkbox and clicked on Close tabs button, the browser will not show the warning message next time you try to close multiple tabs and will immediately close the window.

Now the question comes how to restore the “Warn on Close” warning message and confirmation prompt so that you don’t lose your running tabs if you accidentally click on Close button in future?

Here comes the solution! Firefox provides a simple option in its Preferences window to restore this confirmation prompt. You can use following easy steps to restore the warning message in Mozilla Firefox:

METHOD 1: Using Firefox Options Window

NOTE: In newer Firefox versions, the option mentioned in this method has been removed from Firefox Preferences window. Check out METHOD 2 for newer versions.

1. Click on Firefox Menu button and select Options. Alternatively, you can press ALT key to temporary show Menubar and then select Tools -> Options. Or you can directly launch it using about:preferences URL in address bar.

2. It’ll open Firefox Options window. Now go to “Tabs” tab and enable “Warn me when closing multiple tabs” option:

3. That’s it. Click on OK button and it’ll restore the warning message and confirmation prompt in Firefox.

METHOD 2: Using Advanced Configuration Page

If you can’t find the above mentioned option in Firefox Preferences window, you can restore the “Close multiple tabs” warning message using Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration “about:config” page.

1. Open Mozilla Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “I accept the risk!” button.

2. Now type warnonclose in Search filter box and it’ll show following preference in the window:

3. If the preference value is set to true, it means warning on closing multiple tabs is enabled. If the value is set to false, it means the warning message is disabled.

To restore the warning or confirmation message, set the browser.tabs.warnOnClose preference to true.

Simple. Isn’t it? Did you also face this problem in past? How did you manage to restore the message box? Please share your experience in your comment…

NOTE: If you are using any other web browser and want to enable or disable “Warn on Close” feature, following tutorial will help you:

[Tip] Enable / Disable Warning on Closing Multiple Tabs in All Web Browsers