[Tip] Restore Individual Tabs from Recently Closed Tab Groups Using Google Chrome History Menu

In all web browsers, you can restore recently closed tabs or windows using History menu. Web browsers store information about recently closed tabs in built-in History manager feature to help users in restoring previously visited websites easily and quickly later.

In Google Chrome browser, you can restore previously visited websites in tabs by clicking on 3-dots menu and selecting History option. You can also press Ctrl+H keys together to launch History manager in a separate tab where you can check all previously visited websites. You can delete or remove websites from History if you no longer want Chrome to store the website in History.

When you select 3-dots Menu -> History option, you get following interface:

As you can see in the above screenshot, Chrome is showing 5 Tabs option under “Recently closed tabs” list and if you click on 5 tabs option, it’ll restore all 5 tabs. There is no way provided to select individual tab to restore it from the recently closed tab group.

In newer versions of Chrome, you can modify a hidden preference/flag to force Chrome to show a sub-menu in History menu. This sub-menu will show a list of all tabs present in the recently closed tab group so that you can restore any desired tab from the group.

Following screenshot shows the new sub-menu showing in Chrome’s History menu:

By default, this feature is disabled in Chrome and interested users can activate and enable the feature by changing a hidden preference as mentioned above.

If you also want to force Chrome to show list of all tabs present in recently closed tab groups, following steps will help you:

1. Open Google Chrome web browser and type chrome://flags/ in address bar and press Enter. It’ll open the advanced configuration page.

2. Now type sub-menus in the “Search flags” box.

You’ll get following option:

3. To activate and enable new History sub-menu feature in Chrome, select Enabled from the drop-down box for the above mentioned option.

4. Google Chrome will ask you to restart the browser. Click on “Relaunch now” button to restart Google Chrome.

That’s it. You have successfully activated and enabled new sub-menu feature in Chrome History menu.

Now go to 3-dots Menu and select History option and you’ll get sub-menus for all recently closed tab groups to restore individual tabs.

PS: In future, if you decide to disable or remove new sub-menu functionality and restore default behavior, select “Default” option from the drop-down box for above mentioned option and restart the browser.

Also Check:

[Tip] Enable New “Memories” History Feature in Google Chrome