Can you gracefully shut down/reopen browsers like some automated process do?

Factual Questions
1

Okay, so sometimes I open way too many browser windows. I tend to open a few links from one page, then read one of those, and open a few links from that page. Eventually I’ve got 100 tabs open. Which at some point I will stop and get to. But the memory leaks of the browsers often end up using up all your ram that way.

Now, there is apparently an elegant way to ask IE or Chrome to shut down, and then re-open with all its previous windows. This happens, for example, when windows automatically shuts down for updates. Other programs can also do this - for example, when you run CCleaner, it’ll say “chrome needs to be shut down to clear out the cache, do this now?” and if you click yes, chrome gracefully exits and then when you open it again next, it restores all the windows just like you had it before.

So what I’m asking is - is there some way for the end user to do this manually? To close a browser to free up resources (and reset the clock on memory leaks) and then re-open them in their previous state?

2

In Chrome, go to chrome://restart (you have to type it in yourself or bookmark it) or use the Restart My Chrome extension

For Firefox, get the Restartless Restart addon

In IE, go to firefox.com or chrome.com and get another browser :wink:

3

Does Restart My Chrome do the same thing as chrome://restart?

Anyway, that trick is good for clearing up memory leaks (or at least resetting them), but ideally what I’d like to be able to do is shut down chrome that way, do something else ram-intensive for a while, then re-open chrome later. Basically seperate shut-down and restart processes rather than doing them both at once. Is that possible?

4

I don’t know if it qualifies as graceful, but you can set a browser so that opening a new instance will open all the tabs that were open when you last closed it.

5

Probably, but I haven’t tried it.

Yeah, there are several ways to do this, so take your pick. I’ll use Chrome as an example, but Firefox has the same features (just dig a bit).

  1. In Chrome, you can right-click on a tab to bookmark all open tabs into a folder (Ctrl-Shift-D) and reopen them again (by middle-clicking the folder) the next time you launch. Then delete the folder when you’re done.

  2. In chrome://settings/ change “On Startup” to “Where you left off”. This way, any time you close Chrome, it’ll remember your tabs and reopen them whenever you relaunch the program.

  3. Use an addon like this one or this one to manage and save sessions

  4. (Seems to be Firefox-only right now) It automatically remembers your last session. Go to History -> Restore last session to bring all the tabs back.

6

That’s helpful, thanks.

7

You bet.