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To stop Chrome from reopening the pages from your previous session, change its startup setting to Open the New Tab page. In Chrome on a computer, go to Settings → On startup and select that option.

Change Chrome’s startup setting

  1. Open Chrome and click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner.
  2. Select Settings.
  3. In the Settings navigation, select On startup.
  4. Choose Open the New Tab page.

Chrome will open a new tab at launch instead of restoring the pages from your previous session. The setting is documented in Google Chrome Help.

What Chrome’s startup options do

Under On startup, Chrome offers three choices. Select the one that matches what you want to see when the browser launches:

Option What opens at startup
Open the New Tab page A new tab, rather than the pages from your last session.
Continue where you left off The pages that were open when you last quit Chrome.
Open a specific page or set of pages The page or pages you choose. You can add, edit, or delete entries in the list.

If you want Chrome to open the same selected sites each time, choose Open a specific page or set of pages and manage the list shown there.

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Startup page and homepage are different

The startup page appears when Chrome first launches. The homepage is the page opened by the Home button. Google describes the startup page as “the one that shows when you first launch Chrome on your device.” Changing the homepage does not necessarily stop Chrome from restoring the previous session; change the On startup option for that.

If Chrome keeps reopening the old tabs

  • Check the selected option: Return to Settings → On startup and make sure Open the New Tab page is selected, not Continue where you left off.
  • Check whether an administrator manages Chrome: On work or school Chromebooks, a network administrator may control startup and homepage settings, preventing you from changing them.
  • Consider unwanted software if settings changed unexpectedly: Google says an unrequested change to the startup page, homepage, or search engine can be related to unwanted software. That change alone does not establish that your device is infected; see Google’s Chrome Help guidance.
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Session restoration and site sign-ins

With Continue where you left off, Chrome may reopen sites in the same signed-in state because cookies and site data are saved. Google also documents an option to delete on-device site data when all Chrome windows close. That is separate from the startup-page setting and may affect whether you remain signed in to websites. Use it only if you want that data-clearing behavior; it is not necessary simply to stop Chrome from reopening tabs.

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