What can I do to preserve tabs when restarting Firefox?

firefox reboot

15,495

Solution 1

Go to Edit > Preferences > Main > When FireFox starts and select Show my windows and tabs from last time. Once. After that, you can close FireFox, and it'll be remember everything you have open to show you next time you start it

[edit] For Firefox 5 on Windows, the option is located at: Tools > Options > General > When Firefox starts: Select "Show my windows and tabs from last time"

Solution 2

Just close the browser and then re-open it.

You can also use this addin QuickRestart, which will add a button you can put on your toolbar to allow for 1-click restart.

Solution 3

You seem to have two disjoint parts in your question.

enable/disable plugins which leads to a restart requirement with firefox
- intent of adding new plugins which would also require a restart of firefox

If you have already done point 1 and want to now do point 2 without causing effect of actions in point 1, you will need to undo the enables and disables you did there.

All this can be done without a restart.
If the session manager is around (as others point out), it will restore your tabs after the restart.

Solution 4

Ubiquity can do this, among it's many, many features, with "restart-firefox" :)

Solution 5

Assuming you are on Windows, I generally go to Task Manager and kill the process. The next time I restart Firefox it gives me the option to restore my tabs.

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15,495

Tamara Wijsman

In my free time I visit Stack Exchange to help out people with their questions and help maintain the community. Located in Belgium, I have studied Computer Science at the University of Antwerp and became a Master in Software Engineering. When I think a post can be improved I will try to do so by fixing grammatical or spelling errors, clarifying meaning without changing it, correcting minor mistakes, adding related resources or links. For the less obvious things of those I will leave a note in the edit, click on the date to see this. I will only edit content in posts once, and let the author or other users be free to choose to rollback; when there are opposing views, we can raise this to meta to let the majority decide which revision of the post they want. This will be done with respect of the original author and when I'm sure enough that it would only improve the post. Have a nice day! :)

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Tamara Wijsman almost 2 years

In the Add-ons window, if I enable/disable an Extension, a yellow bar with a "Restart Firefox" button appears. This tells me "Firefox will try to restore your tabs and Windows when it restarts."

I want it to pick up some new plugins, and not enable/disable any existing ones. How do I restart Firefox manually, without losing my tabs/Windows?
Wolph almost 15 years

I'm afraid I was unclear. I was simply using the enable/disable to demonstrate that Firefox apparently already has a "restore windows" feature. I just didn't know how to use it, except through toggling extensions. There are lots of times it's useful to restart Firefox that have nothing to do with installing extensions, e.g., when Firebug smashes your global CSS.
Nathaniel almost 15 years

Plus Ctrl+Alt+R keyboard shortcut.
Bora about 13 years

@Nathaniel: Doesn't work (FF4)
NightOwl about 13 years

Ctrl+Alt+R still works in FF4. I just looked in my File menu, checked to see if the command was still there and it is; I then tried pressing the key combo, and my FF4 restarted. If it is not working for you, you may have an extension which is conflicting with it somehow.
Dave Jarvis over 11 years

Firefox 19 appears to be different.