Two buttons that sound the same
You have a window full of tabs and you need it gone, but not lost. Chrome offers Bookmark all tabs. A tab manager offers Save this window. Both promise you can come back later. They keep different things, and the difference is exactly the part that took you an hour to set up.
Short version: bookmarks keep the addresses. A saved window keeps the window.
What Bookmark all tabs keeps
- Press Ctrl+Shift+D on Windows or Cmd+Shift+D on a Mac, or right-click any tab and choose Bookmark all tabs.
- Name the folder. Every tab in the window goes into it as a bookmark.
You now have a folder of links, in the order the tabs were in. That is useful, and it is free and built in. It is also all you have:
- Tab groups are gone. The folder is flat. Group names, colours and which tab belonged to which group are not recorded.
- Pinned tabs are ordinary bookmarks. Open the folder later and the brief you pinned at the front is a normal tab somewhere in the row.
- Two windows become one folder each. There is no way to say “these two windows are one project”, and no way to reopen both at once.
- Opening all loads everything at once. Right-click the folder, choose Open all, and forty pages load together.
There is a longer walkthrough, including a bookmark-folder routine that works well, in how to bookmark all open tabs in Chrome.
What Save this window keeps
In Nest, a free tab manager for Chrome, Backup opens on Saved Sessions, and the first button there is Save this window. One click saves the window you are in as a Session:
- Every tab, in order, with its title and address.
- Every Chrome tab group in the window, with its name and colour, and which tabs are in it.
- Which tabs are pinned.
- The window itself, so a Session saved from two windows reopens as two windows.
Nest names the Session for you; click the name on its card to rename it. Next to the button, Save this group saves only the tab group you are in, and the row beneath lets you name a Session first, choose This window or All windows, and tick Close after saving when the point is to clear the browser.
Three named Sessions are free, and Sessions you import from another tab manager never use up that allowance. Pro makes Sessions unlimited, syncs them to your other computers, and can keep a Session up to date as the window changes (Live Sessions).
Getting the window back
On the Session’s card, Restore reopens it in a new window, or new windows, with the groups rebuilt in their colours and the pinned tabs pinned. Choose… opens a list so you can restore some tabs and leave the rest saved.
A large restore does not hammer the computer: each page loads once, and every tab except the front tab of each window is suspended until you click it. Forty tabs come back as forty tabs, not forty page loads.
What if you forgot to save?
Closing a window with three or more tabs, or a tab group with two or more, is saved automatically by Nest’s Autopilot as an Automatic Session, kept for seven days free and thirty on Pro. It appears in the Autopilot card in Backup with Restore and Keep buttons. So the honest answer to “I closed it without saving” is usually “it is in Autopilot”.
This is the part bookmarks cannot do at all. A folder exists only if you made one.
When bookmarks are still the right choice
- A reference you will keep for years. Bookmarks are a long-term library; Sessions are working sets.
- Links you want to share. A bookmarks folder exports to HTML that any browser reads. Nest exports too, as HTML, Markdown, CSV or JSON, but a bookmark is the format everyone already has.
- One page, not a window. If you want to remember a single article, Ctrl+D is faster than anything.
And they combine. A bookmarks folder for the stable reference pages, a saved Session for the window you are working in, and Autopilot for the window you closed too fast.
Side by side
- Tab groups, names and colours: Save this window keeps them; bookmarks drop them.
- Pinned tabs: Save this window keeps them pinned; bookmarks do not.
- Several windows as one project: Save this window with All windows; bookmarks need a folder each.
- Reopening: Restore loads each page once and suspends the rest; Open all loads every page at once.
- Forgot to save: Autopilot keeps closed windows for seven days; bookmarks keep nothing you did not file.
- Long-term library, sharing a list, one page: bookmarks.
Save the window, not a list of links
One click saves a Chrome window as a Session with its tab groups, pinned tabs and order. Three Sessions free; imported ones never count. Pro makes them unlimited and syncs them.