The Cluttered Startup
By default, when you close Google Chrome and reopen it, you are greeted with a clean, single “New Tab” page. However, Chrome includes a feature that allows it to remember your exact session. If this setting gets activated—often accidentally or by a rogue extension—Google Chrome will automatically restore every single page and tab you had open the last time you closed the browser. If you had 40 tabs open for a research project and closed the browser to clear your workspace, opening Chrome the next morning will result in all 40 tabs violently reloading at once, crashing your browser and slowing your PC to a crawl.
Forcing a Clean Slate
To ensure a fast, fresh browsing experience every time and stop Google Chrome from automatically restoring pages on startup, you must configure the browser’s “On startup” behavior.
Click the three vertical dots (the customize menu) in the extreme top-right corner of Chrome and select Settings. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, look down the list and click on On startup. In the main panel, you will see three distinct radio buttons governing how Chrome behaves when launched. If your browser is restoring old sessions, the middle option, “Continue where you left off,” will be selected. To stop this entirely, click the top radio button: Open the New Tab page. (Alternatively, you can select the third option to open a specific set of pages, like your email and calendar). The change is instant. The next time you launch Chrome, you will get a single, fast-loading blank tab.