Google working on feature to instantly reopen closed tabs in Chrome

Google is reportedly working on a feature to allow users to instantly reopen a closed tab on Chrome.

If you currently close a tab, it is cleared from the memory and if you reopen it then the browser reloads the entire page, which means that you’re essentially just opening the page all over again.

Chrome Story notes that Google is getting ready to make the ‘reopen closed tab’ feature instant. With this feature, when a user closes a page, Chrome won’t clear out the data immediately.

It will instead freeze information about the page and then store it in a cache for a short time. If a user were to click the ‘reopen closed tab’ feature shortly after closing a tab, then it will reopen instantly instead of reloading the page all over again.

A public design document about the feature calls it a ‘closed tab cache.’ The document notes that the feature is based on another functionality being tested called the ‘BackForwardCache,’ which saves pages that users have recently browsed through in order to make Chrome’s Back and Forward buttons work instantly.

It’s unknown when Google plans to roll out the ‘reopen closed tab’ functionality since it is still being tested. However, since this feature is based on the ‘BackForwardCache’ feature, we’ll likely see that one launch first.

Source: Chrome Story, 9to5Google