Bring Back The Save Tabs And Quit Feature In Firefox 4

The earlier versions of Firefox had a useful feature of “Save Tabs and Quit”, which allowed users to save all the URL’s and open tabs before closing Firefox.

Let’s say you have 8 open tabs in Firefox4 and you want to close all of them, shutdown your computer and go elsewhere for some work. You want to resume or reload the same tabs, the next time you want to start Firefox.

Sure there are other ways of saving Firefox tabs for later use, i.e bookmark all tabs, copy paste the URL’s, syncing the tabs but the “Save Tabs and Quit” feature was really handy. No configurations were required at all, all you need to do is hit the “Close” button and then choose “Save tabs and exit”.

firefox-save-tabs-quit

The sad news is that the “Save and Quit” button is missing in Firefox 4 and it’s disabled by default.

When you click the close button in Firefox 4, the browser closes immediately without giving the user any chance to bookmark all open tabs in Firefox or save the open tabs and URL’s for the next use.

However, you may implement the following trick to bring back the”Save and Quit” feature in Firefox 4:

1. Type about:config in Firefox address bar and choose “I will be careful, I promise”.

Firefox 4 about config warning

2. Type quitwarning in the Filter box and hit the Return key.

You should see an entry named browser.showquitwarning with a value “False”. Double click the “Value” field and change it to “True”

firefox-4-quit-warning

3. All done, now the quit warning function is enabled in Firefox 4 and whenever you want to close Firefox while multiple pages or tabs are opened, Firefox 4 will show the same old warning message “Save And Quit”.

The same filter can always be disabled from Firefox 4 about:config page, so if you see that the Save pages and quit warning is enabled by default (which should not be the case), you can disable it as shown above. (change the value of browser.showQuitWarning to True).

Related: Reduce Firefox memory consumption by loading tabs on demand

Written by on Thursday, March 24th, 2011

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  • hbsjr

    great! I always love that SAVE TAB feature.. I wonder why it is disabled in Firefox 4… :(

  • DTV

    Thanks for the tip.I was really pissed when FF 4 decided to close about 20-30 open tabs without any confirmation so I had to do all my research from scratch.

  • http://pakistan-travel.blospot.com Muhammad Aslam

    Thanks for tip, now I can save the current tabs information thanks :)

  • DOE

    Unfortunately, all that does is bring back the “You are about to close _ (number) of Tabs. It does NOT give you the option of SAVING and quitting so that when you open your next session it all pops back up immediately.

  • Guinevere

    Thanks for the tip. It’s working now.
    I love that feature. I don’t know why they have to change it. It puts most users off when a new version is released, they download, only to find out that old features are disabled.

  • Emily

    I’ve got the same problem as DOE. It only tells me I’m closing x tabs (which it did before), but not the option to save. This seemed like such an easy solution. Going to see if I’ve got an add on or something that’s affecting it.

  • Emily

    I found a way less convinent way through Tab Mix Plus. It’ll have to do.

  • Levan

    Actually, if you want to restore all the tabs from your previous session, then in Firefox options, in the General tab, there’s an option to define what to do when Firefox starts – just choose “Show my windows and tabs from last time” and that’s it.

  • tom

    I went thru the steps, it is set to TRUE, but i do not get the SAVE AND QUIT option, only the “sure you want to close multiple tabs” warning.
    Hmmm

  • tom

    i also just saw this which shows four possible re-sets that need to be adjusted.
    all of mine indicate TRUE but i still have the issue

  • Emily

    @Levan – yes, but about 80% of the time I do NOT want all the tabs shown at start up. I like the option that this provided.

  • Jeffrey S

    It worked for me and I am GRATEFUL. I’m glad there was an easy fix.

  • http://www.zacharydraper.com Zachary

    Quick and easy. Fixed my problem in seconds. Thank you!

  • http://blogs.reed.edu/alan Alan S

    The sad news is that the “Save and Quit” button is missing in Firefox 4 and it’s disabled by default.

    Had I known this, I would NOT have clicked exit and lost a dozen-plus tabs. Retrieving these tabs is impossible I guess.

    Thanks a lot.

  • Mick

    Thanks for the tip. It’s working now.I went thru the steps
    easy as falling of a log.

    Thanks alot

  • Ween

    You rock. Thanks

  • The Enemy

    I wonder if people complaining that it still doesn’t work after the fix realize you have to close and re-open Firefox for it to take effect. So if the feature is disabled and you have tabs in your current Firefox window you want to save, the best way to do it is open a new Firefox window, make the changes, then close that window. After that, you should have the option to save all of your tabs in your “already open” window.

  • ThereIsAWay

    Alan S: There is a way to open old tabs if you accidentally closed them…CTRL+SHIFT+T

  • pavel

    Two thumbs up!

    :)
    PH

  • Archer

    Thanks, was looking for the same.

  • http://www.techfeb.com Sandeep Yadav

    Excellent goods from you, man. I’ve understand your stuff previous to and you are just too great. I really like what you have acquired here, certainly like what you are stating and the way in which you say it Hobby You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it smart. I can not wait to read much more from you. This is really a wonderful web site.

  • dave

    works for me just remember you have to restart firefox for it to work

  • diepluc

    Thank you so much!!! I really miss “Save and quit” button.

  • Ddevin

    That was easy. Thank you.

    I wonder why they would remove it as a default function. I love that option.

  • Lucas

    Sweet! Thank you, I was looking for that :)

  • LB

    If in Tools>Options>Privacy> “Clear history when Firefox closes” is checked, even if you do have the other settings to open previous tabs from history (such as in Tools>Options>General “Show my windows and tabs from last time”) they will have been deleted, thus none to open and you’ll only get one tab.

  • Rob

    … Are you serious?

    Has absolutely nobody here noticed the big button when you first open Firefox that says “Restore tabs from last session”?

    They turned off Save Tabs by default because it’s no longer necessary. Just click one button and poof, all your tabs are back.

  • Shae

    Firefox didn’t get rid of this feature in it’s 4.0 release, it embedded it more. Whenever you close Firefox your session is automatically saved, and can be restored next time you start Firefox by hitting the large “Restore Previous Session beneath the default homepage’s search box, and it automatically restores your tabs (in all panorama groups).

  • Priss

    The quitwarning filter option doesn’t seem to be available in an ubuntu linux operating system. Anyone else have this issue?

  • lol

    you can also go to history menu and click on “restore previous session “

  • RnBram

    One can also go to “History>Restore Previous Session” on starting Firefox. It’s all there. There is no need for “Save Tabs & Quit”

  • Name (required)

    “Rob

    … Are you serious?

    Has absolutely nobody here noticed the big button when you first open Firefox that says “Restore tabs from last session”?

    They turned off Save Tabs by default because it’s no longer necessary. Just click one button and poof, all your tabs are back.”

    I don’t get that option on my homepage when restarting FF.

  • mrpoizun

    Unfortunately, this does not work. Mine already was “true”.

  • Kathy

    Thanks for the tips!! You are so awesome!!!

  • francis

    Nice! Thanks a lot for the tip!

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