Help

How does Tab Lifeboat save my tabs?

Within a minute of every change, and every 5 minutes anyway, Tab Lifeboat saves a snapshot of all your windows, tab groups (name, color, collapsed or not) and tabs (address, title, pinned or not). The snapshots stay inside your browser for 7 days: every snapshot from the last 24 hours, then one per hour.

Once an hour it also writes a backup file to your Downloads folder, outside the browser profile, so your tabs survive even a wiped profile or a reinstall. See where the backup file is.

My browser crashed. How do I get my tabs back?

Click the Tab Lifeboat icon in the toolbar and choose Restore last session. It reopens the windows you had before the browser started, with their tab groups. The button also tells you how many of those tabs are not open now, so you can see whether the browser already brought some back.

Looking for an earlier moment? Choose Open Tab Lifeboat, pick a snapshot from the list, the calendar or the search, and restore all of it, one window, one tab group or a single tab.

Tip: pin Tab Lifeboat to the toolbar (the puzzle icon, then the pin) so it is one click away when you need it.

Where is my backup file and how do I import it?

In your Downloads folder, in TabLifeboat\Chrome-2026-10-08-4f2a or similar: each installation gets its own folder, named after the browser and the day it was installed. The exact path is shown at the bottom of the Tab Lifeboat page.

• latest.json is rewritten every hour with your recent snapshots.
• monday.json to sunday.json are written once a day, so you also have the state of each of the last 7 days.

To use a backup, open Tab Lifeboat, click Import backup file and choose one of these files. You can browse and restore its snapshots as usual; your own history is not changed. This works after a reinstall, on another computer (copy the file over) and between Chrome and Edge.

"Backups to Downloads are paused". What now?

Your browser is set to ask where to save every download, so each backup would open a Save As dialog. Tab Lifeboat pauses the backup file instead of bothering you every hour. Snapshots inside the browser keep working.

To fix it, open the download settings (chrome://settings/downloads in Chrome, edge://settings/downloads in Edge), turn off the option that asks where to save each file, then click Retry backup on the Tab Lifeboat page.

What happens if I turn off the backup file?

Untick Back up to a file in Downloads at the bottom of the Tab Lifeboat page and nothing more is written to your Downloads folder. Snapshots inside the browser, the 7 days of history and restoring all keep working. Backup files already in Downloads stay as they are; they are just no longer updated.

The risk: your history then lives only inside the browser, so a wiped profile or a reinstall takes it with it. Tick the box again and a backup is written right away.

Why do I see a tab group twice after a restore?

Your browser keeps its own saved copy of each tab group, for example in the bookmarks bar. Extensions cannot see or reopen those saved copies, so a restore creates a new group next to the old copy.

To tidy up, right-click the older copy and choose Delete group. Careful: deleting a group that is open also closes its tabs, so delete the one whose tabs are not open.

Why were some tabs not reopened?

Extensions may only open regular web pages. Browser pages such as chrome://settings, pages of other extensions and local files are skipped. After a restore, Tab Lifeboat lists them under "could not be reopened" with a Copy addresses button, so you can open them yourself.

Some sites also send you to their sign-in page after a restore. Sign in and you get back to the page; until then Tab Lifeboat may mark it as "not open now", because the address is different.

How do I delete a page, a day or my whole history?

• A snapshot: the trash icon next to Restore all.
• A page: point at the tab and click the trash icon at the end of its row. Choose Remove this page for that exact address, or Remove all of the site, which also takes its subdomains.
• A day: pick the day in the calendar, then Delete this day.
• Everything: Delete all history at the bottom of the page.

The backup files in your Downloads folder are rewritten to match. Folders of earlier installations and copies you made yourself are not changed; delete them in your Downloads folder if you want them gone. Pages that are still open are saved again by the next snapshot, so close them first.

Why does my browser say it can "read your browsing history"?

That is how browsers describe access to your open tabs, which Tab Lifeboat needs to save their addresses and titles. It does not read the browser's history list. Everything stays on your device: no account, no analytics, nothing sent to us or anyone else. See the privacy notice.

Are incognito tabs saved?

No. Tab Lifeboat skips incognito windows, even if you allow the extension in incognito.

What is Tab Lifeboat Pro?

Pro is coming soon: unlimited history with calendar and search across all of it, automatic backups to your own Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive, or to your own NAS or Nextcloud via WebDAV, restore on any computer straight from your cloud, end-to-end encryption and snapshot comparison. The free version keeps working either way.

Hold the founding price of €14.99, once.