Fork 'Chrome Session Restore' on GitHub
Created by Lo Sauer, 2011
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 Restore Crashed Chrome Tab-Sessions / Session-File Restore Loader

  • What?


    a) Things crash. Crashing is part of life. Sometimes web-browsers such as Google's Chrome crash. After restarting, Chrome's previous tabs may be gone. Probably material fatigue :) Fortunately, Chrome's sessions aren't lost and savely reside in files on your harddrive.
    b) Opening any one link is easy. You just click it. Opening dozens of links gets tedious. For tedious things, we have automatons such as computers running applications. Unfortuantely, link-opening automation-tasks are limited to popups and modal-windows, for all to obvious reasons.
    c) =a+b This client-based web-application (i.e. nothing is uploaded), processes user-selected session files, to subsequently open as many tabs at once as the user-specified, thus serving as a proof of principle that tab-opening automation is possible.
    The User interface is leaned on Chrome's own UI design.

    How?


    1. Drag and drop (DnD) a "Chrome Tab Session File" from one of Chrome's 'user profile-folders' (See Note 3) into the footer-bar at the bottom, which then glows.
    2. Click on the small arrow in the bottom-bar to open a list of restorable tabs. Clicking the topmost icon will open the first #n-th tabs , with the maximum number of tabs specified in the adjacent number-input.
    3. Other session files can be drag and dropped, but ensure that the tabs-menu, which extends from the footer-bar, is closed.
    Note 1: An alternative file-upload input is displayed for non-DnD supporting Browsers. Your browser must support the HTML5-FileReader API.
    Note 2: More technical details are provided here.
    Note 3: Find your Chrome Session Saver files in Windows at %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\, and in  Linux at ~/.config/google-chrome/Default. Sort your files by last modifications(Linux: ls -tr); Copy and past the path in your file-explorer or file-input dialog of the application. For more information visit,  Chrome's Application Data folder 
    Note 4: Generic use is possible: The urls of other files (e.g. HTML-file) can be parsed-out and opened as well - BUT on a pure trial and error basis.

    Why?


    Chrome experiences material fatigue now and then. Browser extensions are given greater security premissions, so creating an app to restore sessions becomes trivial. Extensions constantly reside in the Browser, eating-up resources and often injecting code into every web-site that is being loaded. Such behavior can potentially interfere with the layout or behavior of webpages. Less extensions means less worries, the same regard holds for small standalone application to accomplish small, trivial tasks.

    Note: This project is not associated with Google.

    Download this sample file (right click->save as) and drag and drop it onto the Chrome footer-bar!