How to Confirm Before Closing Windows with Multiple Tabs in Chrome, Edge, Brave

If you use a lot of tabs when browsing the web with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, or any other Chromium based browser, you might want to enable an optional feature that asks to confirm whether or not you wish to close any browser window with multiple tabs open. This can help to prevent you from losing active browsing sessions and tabs that you might not want to close, and help to prevent accidental browser tab loss.

This trick works the same in any Chromium based browser, including Chrome, Edge, Brave, and others, so whatever you use as your default web browser on Mac (or PC) you can make this change.

How to Ask to Confirm Before Closing Multiple Tabs in Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc

1. Open Chrome, Edge, Brave, or any other Chromium based web browser, and in the URL address bar, enter the following:

For Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, and other Chromium based browsers:
chrome://settings/appearance

For Edge only:
edge://settings/appearance

2. Hit Return to access the Settings for the web browser
3. Scroll down to locate the setting for “Ask before closing a window with multiple tabs” and toggle that setting to the ON position

The setting takes effect immediately. Now when you’re browsing the web in one of these browsers, and have multiple tabs open, you will see a message pop-up that asks you to confirm if you wish to close the window that contains multiple tabs.

This is a handy setting that can help you avoid losing important tabs, windows full of tabs for projects, and many other scenarios where you may inadvertently close out of browser tabs by closing a window.

What if I already closed a window with tons of tabs that I want to restore?

If you just enabled this feature because you lost a bunch of tabs by closing a window in Chrome, Edge, Brave, and other Chromium browsers, you can still recover those browser tabs in most situations.

Pull down the “History” menu, and you should see the windows, tabs, and tab groups that were closed. Simply select what you want to reopen to restore those tabs and windows again.

Assuming you enabled the “ask before closing a window with multiple tabs” option as discussed in this article, you will have that protection going forward as well. But remember, you can use your browser History to recover lost tabs as well.