How to Close All Tabs in Chrome (and Keep Them)

Close all tabs on desktop

• Close the window: Ctrl+Shift+W on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS, Cmd+Shift+W on a Mac. Every tab in that window closes. Other windows stay.
• Close everything but this tab: right-click the tab you want to keep and choose Close other tabs.
• Close everything to the right: right-click a tab and choose Close tabs to the right. Useful when the left end of the strip is the stuff you keep.
• Quit Chrome: Alt+F4 or the window’s close button on Windows, Cmd+Q on a Mac. Every window closes.

Whichever you use, Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T) brings the last closed window back whole, so a slip is not final.

Close all tabs on Android

1. Tap the tab counter, the square with a number next to the address bar.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu at the top right of the tab switcher.
3. Choose Close all tabs, and confirm.

Incognito tabs close separately, from the incognito side of the switcher. Recently closed tabs are listed under Recent tabs in the ⋮ menu for a while afterwards.

Close all tabs on iPhone and iPad

1. Tap the tab switcher icon at the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap Edit, then Close All Tabs.

Chrome on iOS keeps recently closed tabs under Recent tabs in the tab grid for a while afterwards.

Keep what you close: three ways

Closing is cheap once you trust that the tabs are somewhere. Three places they can be, from Chrome’s own to the one that needs nothing from you.

Bookmark all tabs first. Press Ctrl+Shift+D (Cmd+Shift+D) and Chrome puts every tab in the window into a bookmarks folder. Then close the window. The folder keeps the addresses, in order. It drops tab groups, pinned tabs and which window was which, which matters more than it sounds once you have more than one project open. The trade-offs are in Save this window vs. bookmark all tabs.

Save the window as a Session, then close it. In Nest, a free tab manager for Chrome, Backup opens on Saved Sessions. Save this window keeps the window with every tab, every Chrome tab group with its name and colour, and every pinned tab. Tick Close after saving in the row beneath and Nest saves and closes in one go; choose All windows there to do every window at once. Restore on the Session’s card brings it all back in new windows, groups rebuilt. Three Sessions are free, imported ones never count, and Pro makes them unlimited and syncs them.

Let Autopilot catch it. If you close a window with three or more tabs, or a tab group with two or more, without saving, Nest’s Autopilot saves it on its own as an Automatic Session, kept seven days free and thirty on Pro. It is in the Autopilot card in Backup with Restore and Keep. So closing all tabs with Nest installed is never a loss, only a move.

A clean strip that stays clean

Closing everything once a week is a sign the tabs were never sorted. Two habits keep the strip short without the weekly purge:

• Snooze what you are not using. A tab for Friday closes now and reopens on Friday. How to hide tabs in Chrome covers the options.
• Let idle tabs go on their own. Nest’s Suspend unloads tabs you have not touched for days, and Tidy away closes the ones idle for weeks and keeps them 30 days. Both are off until you turn them on, and both have Undo. See Autopilot.

Questions

I closed all tabs by accident. How do I get them back? Press Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T) straight away; the window returns. On a phone, open Recent tabs. If Chrome was quit, see how to restore tabs in Chrome.

Does closing all tabs free memory? Closed tabs use none. If the goal is memory rather than tidiness, Chrome’s Memory Saver unloads inactive tabs without closing them, and Nest’s Suspend does the same on a schedule you choose.

Is there a shortcut to close all tabs except the current one? Not a keyboard one. Right-click the tab and choose Close other tabs.