How to Recover Text After a Chrome Crash (2026 Guide)

It’s the digital equivalent of dropping your ice cream. You’re 800 words into an email, a Jira ticket, or a blog post. The screen freezes. The dreaded “Aw, Snap!” appears. And just like that, your words are gone.

If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably panic-searching for a solution. Let’s look at your options.

Option 1: The Browser’s “Reopen Closed Tab” (Hit or Miss)

Chrome and Edge are pretty good at restoring tabs, but they are notoriously bad at restoring form data.

Open Chrome.
Press Ctrl + Shift + T (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + T (Mac).
Your tabs will reopen.

The Verdict: Usually, the page reloads as if it’s brand new. The text inside the text boxes is rarely preserved unless the specific website has its own auto-save feature (like Gmail or Google Docs).

Option 2: Check for a “Drafts” Folder

If you were typing on a modern platform like Reddit, Gmail, or WordPress, you might be lucky.

Gmail: Check the “Drafts” label in the sidebar.
Reddit: Look for a “Drafts” button in the posting interface (though this is buggy for comments).
GitHub/Jira: Unfortunately, these rarely save unsubmitted comments.

Option 3: The Prevention Method (For Next Time)

The harsh reality is that once the volatile memory (RAM) of that tab is cleared by a crash, the data is often unrecoverable if it wasn’t saved to disk.

This is exactly why we built Form Recover.

Form Recover acts as an “airbag” for your text. It runs quietly in the background and saves every keystroke to your browser’s local storage.

It’s Local: Your text never leaves your computer.
It’s Instant: If Chrome crashes, just re-open the tab. Form Recover will detect the URL match and show you a recovery icon.
It’s Automatic: You don’t have to remember to hit “Save”.

How to protect yourself immediately:

Install Form Recover for Chrome (It’s free).
That’s it. You’re protected.

Next time Chrome decides to take a nap while you’re working, you can just smile, reload, and click “Restore”.