1994097 - Firefox on macOS does not restore previous tabs when closed using the red “X” button, despite “Open previous windows and tabs” being enabled.

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Kevin Ying [:KY]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:143.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/143.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. In Firefox 143.0.4 on macOS 15.7, go to Settings → General → Startup.
2. Enable the option “Open previous windows and tabs.”
3. Open several tabs (some pinned, some normal).
4. Close Firefox by clicking the red “X” button in the top-left corner of the window.
5. Reopen Firefox.

Actual results:

Only pinned tabs are restored.
Normal tabs do not reappear.
However, if Firefox is closed using Cmd + Q (“Quit Firefox”), all tabs restore correctly.

Expected results:

All previously opened tabs and windows should restore automatically whether Firefox was closed via the red “X” button or with Cmd + Q.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Session Restore' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Monica Chiorean]

I am able to reproduce the issue on Mac 12.6 using FF build 145.0b2 and 146.0a1.
Marking issue as new, for engineering input.

Comment 3

[DJ]

This behavior is technically working as intended, but I agree it's unexpected. For the time being, you should be able to retrieve closed windows by going to History > Recently closed windows.

Comment 4

[Sheelaah]

I'm experiencing a similar thing on Windows 11 with Firefox 149.0.2, except none of my tabs open. It works correctly if I close with Menu-Exit.