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TMS & Chrome 149: suspended tabs inside tab groups lost after restart

· 4 min read
Giovanni Solone
Giovanni Solone
Co-founder of Marvellous Codeworks. Rescued The Great Suspender, built The Marvellous Suspender
info

2026-06-12

  • A companion extension — back-grouped-tabs — is now available as a temporary workaround while a proper fix for the Chrome bug is being developed. See the new section below for details.

2026-06-15

  • TMS 8.1.4 has been submitted to the Chrome Web Store and is currently pending review. This version includes a fix for the tab group restore issue.
  • The Chrome team is also working on an official browser-side fix: the patch is under review at chromium-review.googlesource.com. It's a race to see who gets there first!

2026-06-16

  • TMS 8.1.4 is now live on the Chrome Web Store. The tab group restore issue is fixed — update TMS and you are good to go.
  • The back-grouped-tabs companion workaround is no longer needed. The repository remains available for anyone who still wants it, but you can safely remove the extension.

If you are using Chrome 149 and noticed that your suspended tabs inside tab groups turn into blank New Tab pages after a browser restart, you are not alone — and it is not your fault.

Suspendy Guy is not happy about this

What happened​

Starting from Chrome 149, a change in the browser's tab group restore engine broke compatibility with suspended tabs managed by TMS. When Chrome restores a session after a restart, it now skips tabs whose URL does not start with https:// inside tab groups. Since TMS suspended tabs use an internal chrome-extension://… URL, they are silently discarded instead of being restored.

Tabs outside tab groups are not affected and restore correctly as before.

The issue was reported by users shortly after Chrome 149 rolled out and confirmed by the TMS team. A member of the Chrome development team has acknowledged the problem and filed an internal bug to investigate whether the behavior change was intentional or an unintended side effect.

Temporary workaround​

If you lost tabs, there is a way to recover them without restoring a backup:

  1. Open the tab group that now shows blank New Tab pages.
  2. For each empty tab, click the browser Back button (top-left arrow) once.
  3. The original suspended tab page should reappear.

This is tedious if you have many tabs, but it beats losing them permanently.

Preventing further losses in the meantime

Until a fix is available, consider unsuspending tabs before restarting Chrome, or temporarily moving important tabs out of tab groups.

What we are doing about it​

  • TMS 8.1.4 is now available on the Chrome Web Store. It addresses the tab group restore issue directly — suspended tabs inside tab groups will no longer be discarded after a browser restart. Update TMS and the problem goes away.
  • The Chrome team also had an official fix under review on the browser side; TMS shipped the fix first.

We know how frustrating data loss is, and we are sorry you hit this. Thank you for your patience while we sort it out.

Companion workaround: back-grouped-tabs​

Workaround no longer needed

TMS 8.1.4 is out and fixes the issue natively. If you have updated TMS, you can safely remove the back-grouped-tabs companion extension. The repository remains available for anyone who still wants to use it.

While the proper fix was in the works, a small companion extension was made available: back-grouped-tabs.

It does one thing: when Chrome restores a session and discards suspended tabs inside tab groups, this extension detects the affected tabs and navigates them back so the suspended page reappears — automatically, without you having to click the Back button on each one.

To install it, clone or download the repository and load it as an unpacked extension in Chrome (chrome://extensions/ → enable Developer Mode → Load unpacked). The README covers everything you need to know.

References / Links​

Follow the original issue on GitHub: #369 – Suspended tabs inside tab groups are lost after browser restart (Chrome 149)