Prevent Closing of Google Chrome™

Prevent the closure of Google Chrome when the last tab is open, using the least intrusive method.

Prevent Closing of Google Chrome™ — never lose a session to one stray click Closing the last tab in a window closes the window. Closing the last window closes the browser. That single keystroke — a reflexive Ctrl+W, a mis-aimed click on the X — can end a session you spent all morning building: the research tabs, the half-written form, the dashboards you had finally arranged just right. There is no confirmation dialog and no undo at the window level. One moment everything is there; the next it is gone. This extension removes that failure mode. It keeps a small, quiet placeholder in your window so the window always has one more tab than you think it does. Close your last real tab and the window simply stays open, showing a New Tab page, waiting for you. Nothing is lost, and you never have to rebuild the session from your history. HOW IT WORKS The approach is deliberately gentle. Instead of intercepting your keyboard, blocking shortcuts, or throwing up "Are you sure?" dialogs, the extension maintains a single pinned New Tab page at the front of the protected window. Pinned tabs are narrow and stay out of your way. When you have several tabs open the placeholder is removed entirely, because your own tabs are already keeping the window alive. It reappears only as you approach the edge, when the window is down to its last tab and would otherwise vanish. The result is protection you rarely notice until the moment it saves you. Your shortcuts keep working exactly as they always have. Ctrl+W still closes tabs. The X still closes windows you genuinely want to close. Nothing is hijacked, and no popup asks you to confirm a decision you already made. CHOOSE HOW MUCH PROTECTION YOU WANT Three modes let you decide how far the safety net extends. Protect the last remaining window. The subtlest option and the recommended default. Open as many windows as you like and close them freely; protection engages only when you are down to your final window, the one whose closure would shut the browser completely. Protect the first window you opened. Useful if you treat one window as your permanent home base and the others as scratch space. That original window stays open no matter what, while everything else behaves normally. Protect every window. The strongest setting. No window can be closed by emptying it. Note that this does interfere with dragging tabs between windows, so most people should prefer one of the first two options. TIDY UP YOUR NEW TAB PAGES Two optional extras keep things neat if you are the sort of person who accumulates blank tabs without noticing. Allow only one New Tab page per window. Duplicate blank tabs are closed automatically, so you never end up with five identical empty pages competing for space in your tab strip. Keep the New Tab page at the end. Blank tabs are only permitted in the final position, so your real work stays grouped together on the left instead of being interrupted by gaps. Both are off by default. Turn on whichever suits you, or use the extension purely as a safety net. PRIVACY YOU CAN VERIFY This extension makes no network requests of any kind. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, no account, and no server. Nothing you browse is ever collected, stored, or transmitted anywhere. It requests exactly two permissions, and both are genuinely required. Storage saves your handful of preferences and nothing else. Tabs is needed for one narrow purpose: recognising whether a given tab is a New Tab page, so the extension knows which tab is its own placeholder. Chrome shows a broad warning about browsing history for this permission, but the extension reads no history and sends nothing off your device. The code is small and readable, with no remote scripts and no injected content scripts. It runs entirely inside the browser. DESIGNED TO STAY OUT OF THE WAY There is nothing to configure before it starts working. Install it and the protection is active immediately with sensible defaults. The settings panel opens from the toolbar icon, holds five simple settings, and closes again in seconds. No onboarding, no tour, no upsell. The interface is translated into more than forty languages, and the extension is lightweight enough that you will never notice it running. WHO IT IS FOR Anyone who works with many tabs and has lost them at least once: researchers, students, developers, writers, analysts, and anyone who keeps a browser open for days at a time. If you have ever reached for the history menu with a sinking feeling, this is for you. Install it once, and stop thinking about it. — Not made by Google. Google Chrome™ is a trademark of Google LLC. This extension is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google LLC.