Google’s browser is the most popular and used by the majority of users around the world. Its features and the large number of extensions available to extend its functions are the reasons why users choose Google Chrome as their default browser. However, it may be the case that we close tabs and windows by mistake causing us to lose everything we are doing. Today we are going to tell you how we can do so that this does not happen.
There are some features that may not be liked by many of the users, as is the fact that Google has decided that the combination to close all Chrome windows and tabs is Ctrl + Shift + W . And it is that it is a combination of keys that can be easily and accidentally pressed when you change from one tab to another within the browser itself, since it is the combination Ctrl + Shift + TAB which we permit and go from one tab to another quickly.
This can be solved, but we are also going to tell you about other ways we have to preserve tabs, windows and Chrome itself from accidental closings.
Change the keyboard shortcut action
Taking into account that the tab key and the letter W are right next to each other on the keyboard, it causes us to get confused on more than one occasion and inadvertently close all the tabs or browser windows that we have open and lose all work done.
However, Google Chrome does not allow you to deactivate this option or change the keyboard shortcut that allows us to change from one tab to another quickly or the one that offers us the possibility of closing all Chrome tabs and windows. However, there is a way or little trick to avoid this.
To do this, what we can do is change the action of the Ctrl + Shift + W key combination so that it does not close our browser instances open on the desktop. But, since it is something that we cannot do directly, we are going to do it by assigning this same key combination as a direct access to some of the extensions that we have activated in the browser.
In this way, we do not directly override the keyboard shortcut , but we do prevent the browser from closing. To do this, we are going to follow these steps:
- We open a Chrome window and type chrome: // extensions in the address bar, to then press Enter.
- Now we will see in the upper right part of the screen three vertical stripes and the word Extensions next to it. We click on the three lines.
- Now it will take us to a window where we will be able to indicate which combination of keys opens these extensions. Therefore, we select one of them , press the combination Ctrl + Shift + W and accept to save the changes.
From that moment, we can already see how pressing this keyboard shortcut opens the selected extension, but Google Chrome does not close.
Pin Chrome Tabs
If the browser you normally use is Google Chrome, it will have happened to you to close any of its tabs or window and it is just the most important of all the ones you had open. The problem is not to recover the tab, since we can do it through the History, but the information that we have entered, for example, will have been lost and you will have to put it back.
There is a way by which we can set Chrome tabs so that they do not close. With this internal browser trick, the icon with X that is used to close the tabs will disappear, in addition to placing it on the left of the list. All we have to do are these simple steps:
- We click with the right mouse button on the tab that we want to protect.
- Now we select Fix . We will see how it places the window on the left side, in a smaller size and without the possibility of closing it, since it has the button with the X.
- If we want to make the eyelash return to its natural state, we repeat the process, but this time we click on Do not set . So we will have the tab as always.
Lock tabs with an extension
We have another way to lock tabs, but this time by installing an extension called TabJump – Smart Tab Browser. What we achieve with this addition is that every time we try to close a tab, a sign will appear to confirm that we really want to close it. For which functions we will continue, we will do the following:
- Once we have installed the extension in Chrome we will see how a new icon of a green arrow appears on the right side of the browser.
- When we want to block a tab, we only have to put it as active and click on the icon that we have mentioned before.
- Then a pop-up window will appear where we must go to the title section and click on the icon with a lock that appears on the right side. We must press it so that it appears as closed.
Once this is done, if we try to close the tab in question, a warning will appear indicating whether we are sure we want to close it. This is a good way to prevent it from being closed by mistake.
Avoid closing Google Chrome by mistake
It can also happen to us that we accidentally close Google Chrome in its entirety, so everything we are doing will be lost. We can recover the tabs thanks to the history of the browser, but everything we have done on the webs will not be recovered and we will have to do it again.
There is an extension that can help us in this regard, since it will notify us, by means of a sign, that we are going to close the browser and that if that is the action we want we must confirm it.
This extension is Chrome Close Lock . The way to work is very simple, we just have to install the extension, activate it and then it will start working. What this extension does is open a fixed tab where a web is loaded with an HTML code by which, when we are going to close Chrome, a warning will jump us where they will confirm that we are about to close the browser .
It has two small bugs that you should know, such as that it does not work in incognito mode and that, when we open several different sessions of Chrome, from time to time it does not load correctly in all of them. But otherwise it is the most visual way to avoid closing Chrome due to an error, since it will always warn us and ask us for confirmation to carry out said action.