What's the difference between "Open previous tabs and windows" and "Continue where you left off?"

[cprivitere]

Searched issues, discussions, and manual and didn't find anything about what each setting does. Firefox has "Open previous tabs and windows" and Chrome has "Continue where you left off". Does Zen just have both wordings and they do the same thing?

[dosubot[bot]]

Zen Browser has both "Open previous tabs and windows" and "Continue where you left off" as separate settings, and they aren't identical in function.

• "Open previous tabs and windows" restores all windows and tabs from your last session, including their organization and state—similar to Firefox's session restore feature. If you want your entire browsing session to come back exactly as it was, enable this option.
• "Continue where you left off" focuses on reopening the browser on the specific tab you were last using. If "Open previous tabs and windows" is disabled, this setting mostly affects what you see on startup (like which tab or homepage appears), rather than restoring the full session. It's closer to Chrome's behavior, but in Zen, it's a distinct option.

You can enable either or both, but they work independently. If both are unchecked, Zen won't restore any previous tabs or windows. Some users have reported confusion or inconsistent results when both are enabled, but they do serve different purposes in Zen Browser. The terminology comes from both Firefox and Chrome, but in Zen, they're separate features with related but distinct behaviors. For more details and user experiences, see this discussion and this issue.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[cprivitere]

Can a human confirm? That explanation for "Continue where you left off" sounds wrong.

[dosubot[bot]]

You're right to question that explanation—here's what maintainers and users have confirmed:

"Open previous windows and tabs" restores your entire previous session (all windows and tabs) if you quit Zen properly (like File > Exit or Cmd+Q). "Continue where you left off" is meant to reopen the last active tab you were using, but it does not restore the full session if "Open previous windows and tabs" is off. If both are enabled, they can sometimes conflict or behave inconsistently, and maintainers recommend only enabling one to avoid surprises. Also, if you have "clear history on close" enabled, neither setting will work because the session data is deleted.

There have been bugs in the past where "Continue where you left off" didn't always reopen the correct tab, but these were fixed in recent versions. On macOS, quitting with all windows closed won't restore your session, but quitting with a window open will. On Windows, closing the last window is treated as quitting and will restore your session as expected.

For more details and maintainer comments, see this issue, this bug report, and this user guide.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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