How to automatically save all your open tabs in Firefox


How often have you lost all your open tabs data after a browser crash? The answer could be a fair number of times. When such thing happens, it would be very annoying to reopen all tabs once again post the crash. But however, there is no need to worry because there is an add-on for Firefox browser in the form of “Save My Tabs” that automatically saves data about all your open tabs at regular intervals of time to a TSV text file.


The extension does not require any action to be taken by user for it to work. At regular intervals of time, the extension creates a TSV text file that contains data about all your opened tabs that were active at the time when the file was created. The text file contains data in such a way that, it stores details of one unique open tab in one single line with each line containing details such as Tab index, Windows index and URL of the tab and its title each separated by a delimiter.


The default time interval for the periodic TSV file creation is set to 15 minutes and you can change the time interval to suit your needs. The default directory where the TSV files get stored is the user’s profile directory under Firefox browser folder. You can also change the default storage directory to suit your requirements. Users can change these default values by going into the Add-ons window (Firefox menu button->Add-ons->Save MY Tabs Options window).


The following section of the tutorial will guide you on how to make use of the Save My Tabs extension to have the Firefox browser automatically save all open tabs.

Download the extension from the official Mozilla Add-ons page


After the download finishes, the following window will be displayed on your screens wherein you have to click on the Install Now button to start installing the add-on in your Firefox browser.




A restart of your browser may be required in order to complete the installation successfully. So, click on the Restart Now button that will pop up as soon as the installation finishes.



That is it. now, you have the extension installed in your Firefox browser and from here on, it will periodically save all your open tabs data to a TSV text file that will be stored under your Firefox profile directory.

To see the TSV text file, navigate to your Firefox profile folder (Firefox menu button->Help->Troubleshooting information->Open containing folder tab). In your Profile folder, locate the .TSV text file to see all your open tabs.


If you want to change the directory where the open tabs data will be stored, then navigate to the Save MY Tabs extensions Options page through the Add-ons manager window. This is how the Options window of Save My tabs extension looks like. In this window, click on the Choose directory button to choose a location of your own and you can also change the default time interval. Once you are done, click on the Save button.