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Firefox reopens previous tabs while incognito window is active

  • 6 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Graham

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As long as I have an incognito window open, Firefox will reopen old tabs everytime I open a new "regular" window, even if "Open previous windows and tabs" is unchecked.

As long as I have an incognito window open, Firefox will reopen old tabs everytime I open a new "regular" window, even if "Open previous windows and tabs" is unchecked.

All Replies (6)

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I can't reproduce this. Does it still happen in Troubleshoot Mode?

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You can check that those pages aren't set as multiple homepages.

You can check the homepage setting in "Settings -> Home".

Firefox supports multiple homepages separated by '|' (pipe) symbols.

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UPDATE: Now it's happening even when I shut down the computer. After I start up my computer, I open Firefox in an incognito window. But when I open a regular window, it reopens the lone tab that was open from when I shut down everything.

Again, "Open previous windows and tabs" is unchecked.

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The last session will be restored if the browser crashes or is left open while shutting down Windows. You can disable this by changing browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash and toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart to false in about:config.

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You can possibly set browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab to false in about:config to make is possibly to close Firefox with no tab opened.

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I am also having this issue on Firefox 124.0.1 on Windows 11. I ensured "Open previous windows and tabs" was unchecked and was also able to replicate the issue in Troubleshoot Mode.

I also tried changing both "browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash" and "toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart" to false without success.

Additionally, I have noticed that even if Firefox is closed completely, if a new incognito window is opened first (e.g. by right-clicking the icon and selecting "New private window"), opening a new regular window (that's not private) will restore previously closed tabs from the last session. However, if a regular window is opened first, tabs are not restored.