The Cluttered Launch
By default, when you completely close Google Chrome and reopen it, it presents you with a fresh, clean “New Tab” page, ready for a new search. However, many users accidentally toggle a specific startup setting. When this setting is active, launching Chrome will automatically reopen every single tab and window that was active the moment you last closed the browser. While this “continue where you left off” feature is a lifesaver if Chrome crashes unexpectedly, it can be a massive privacy risk (and a huge drain on system RAM) if you share a computer and don’t want the next user to see the 15 tabs you were reading last night.
Forcing a Clean Slate
To ensure privacy upon startup and stop Google Chrome from automatically reopening your previous tabs, you must change the browser’s designated On Startup behavior.
Click the three vertical dots in the extreme top-right corner of the Chrome window and select Settings. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on the option labelled On startup. In the main right-hand panel, you will see three distinct radio buttons. If Chrome is restoring your old tabs, the “Continue where you left off” option is currently selected. To stop this behavior, click the very first radio button: Open the New Tab page. Alternatively, you can select “Open a specific page or set of pages” if you prefer Chrome to always launch directly to your company intranet or a specific news site. Once selected, you can safely close Settings; the change is applied immediately.