+105
Started

Exiting Chrome normally causes (crashed) duplicates in the list?

Kyle Milnes 12 years ago updated by Jim0206 4 years ago 59

Please see the video at: http://youtu.be/hS_-aZeMZLk


Timestamp guide of the bug:

  • 0:14 I exit Chrome via the menu -> Exit option
  • 0:20 I launch Chrome
  • 0:42 You can see the 2 groups (that were open when I exited Chrome) have been duplicated? The old groups are marked as crashed?


My Chrome is set to "Continue where I left off" on start up

My Chrome version at the time of record was Windows: 22.0.1.229.64 beta-m


+2

I just re-tested but with setting "Open the new tab page" instead of "Continue where I left off" and the same issue occurs.


Furthermore, it would seem for non-saved items, the same issue occurs. i.e. If I just have a new window open and then normally Exit Chrome, TO marks the new window in the list as crashed when Chrome starts next time.

+3

A bit more testing, if I have Chrome setting as: "Open the new tab page" and ensure I close all windows/tabs with TO first, then exit Chrome, this seems to work as expected. However in this case, I only have a blank tab when I launch Chrome again. This feels like I'm loosing basic functionality.

I was thinking some more about this one, here is some potentially useful info:


http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9961544/chrome-detect-when-browser-exits

-2

There is no any problems in detecting Chrome exit. Not need to google for this. Problem is in detecting what windows are restored and what are completely new. Especially taking in account that you can restore you windows after creating some new ones.


This is somewhat easy with "Continue where I left off" option in chrome. Yet as nobody exept you use this useless feature anyway, i am not sure it is need to do something about this.


A joke  ; )


This will be fixed : )

+1

I was reading your reply on my phone and was like "ohhhh you didn't" and then scrolled down a bit and laughed hard!


If you would like to use a Google hangout to whiteboard the issues with restoration, I'd be happy to do that with you.

This is the same issue as I am describing in http://tabsoutliner.userecho.com/topic/138054-on-restore-of-a-window-do-not-re-open-previously-closed-tabs/ 

+2

Sorry but this is not fixed :(
I'm under Windows 7, Chrome v26.0.1410.64, the latest extension version and I still get this behavior.


Can I do something to help in locating this bug?

-2

- Do you have "Continue where I left off"  enabled (well it is actually recommended to disable it if yes)?

- is this happens every time on close?

- How long do you use Tabs Outliner (how many nodes you have? this can be seen if you collapse the root node)


-"Do you have "Continue where I left off"  enabled (well it is actually recommended to disable it if yes)?" Yes i have it enabled

-" is this happens every time on close?" Yes, unless i manually close all tabs from TabOutliner and then close TO

-"How long do you use Tabs Outliner (how many nodes you have? this can be seen if you collapse the root node)" I just formatted this pc a week ago and installed TO right away. I have the following nodes open:

Thanks for the fast answer!

-1

How do your exit from Chrome when this happens?

By Chrome Exit, or just by closing the last window?

I click on the big X of the last group of open tabs (on the Crome browser, not in TO)

+3

Hi,


Using TO on Windows 7 x64. Any news on getting TO to work with "Continue where I left off" feature?


Although hibernate is handy for when I'm in the middle of something big, I tend to shut down at the end of the day so can start the next day afresh. Also, what about installs and updates that require restarts?


If TO was able to integrate with and mimic the 'Continue where I left off' feature I would definitely continue to use it, but I don't want to have to restore the last "crashed" session every time.


Thanks,


Tim

-1

sorry, that is actually possible to fix, and even planed, but....

there is more important task meantime to finish and release very asked synchronize capabilities.

Yet i hope in a month i will come to this problem.

-1

Yet not sure we a talking about same.


Can you mention the version of you TO extension and the version of Chrome. The crashed windows on close must not occur anymore

-1

Also there is also some workaround. 


by making Chrome continue to run in background

the crashed windows must never occur at all


http://pctonic.net/improve-chromes-startup-time-by-installing-a-background-app


the problem why they reported as crashed is because on Chrome exit extension is not be able to write anything to disk. To flag the windows as normally closed. There is actually some workarounds for this was implemented recently. But sometimes even them seems fail.

+2

this workaround does not really help me...the old session is no longer marked as crashed, but still another (suspended) window :(

i also don't really want to uncheck "contiue where i left off", as this is an awesome feature in my opinion...


i'm running chrome 28.0.1500.95 m with tab outliner 0.4.72 on W7 x64

i really hope you can fix this issue as i love the whole rest of your extension :)

-5

First of all. You most likely talk not about this bug but about something else. If you have some suspended windows on restart, without crashed labels, that because they are normally saved on exit. This happens automatically in many cases - for example if window have custom label, or note inside, or is placed in some other node. This is expected behavior.


As for for windows that labeled crashed on close - the unfortunate truth is that this feature is just impossible to fix completely without changes in Chrome itself.

When Chrome Closing it abruptly shut down all extensions without giving them chances to save any data to disk or in other storage.

So on restart extension cannot determine are windows were crashed or closed normally. From extension perspective they all looks like suddenly disappeared.

Some workarounds were done that help with that but they all have limits.


The other story is that maybe on restart need reassociate such crashed or normally suspended windows with reopened by Chrome copies. This is possible of course... 

+8

Hi volovyk,

Let me clarify this. This is probably one of the most useful add-on, however the following one lack of feature is a problem. Now it’s not about crash issue.


1.  At the end of our work we want to close and restore the exact same set of tabs to continue our previous unfinished work.

2.  Option A: restore tabs option in chrome is on. Then if we close chrome and open later, the set of opened tab is saved in TO and another set of them open and showed in TO in duplicate. We have to delete the opened set and again click on previous set in TO to get the working set and without making too opmany multiple copies of the same webpage in TO. Too much clicking.

3.  Option B: open new tab option in chrome is on. A new unnecessary tab is open on restoring chrome. We have to click that off in TO, and then doubleclick on previous set of working tab to start working. Before that we have to start TO to do that. Again a number of clicking before you start your work.

4.  Anytime you forget to do so will lead to unnecessary set of duplicates in TO adding to your huge number of already saved tab.

5.  Then you waste one hour each weekend to clean them off.

6.  So is it possible to make an option in TO, to open the last set of working tabs when chrome starts, without all these unnecessary clicks to make that possible.

I hope that clarifies our concerns. thanks again.


+6

For what it's worth, I strongly double this opinion - it is exactly what TO needs to become a truly great plugin. As of now, I just can't find a workable solution of preserving my session when i need to reset Chrome for whatever reason. This leads me to keep "continue where i left off" checked which on the other hand causes ten thousand duplicates on crashes. Vladyslav, I understand that if solved, the issue in Chromium would be the perfect solution for you, but it's only got 7 stars by now and it's probably not really high on the priorities list. Meanwhile, in 0.4.48 you implemented auto-save for windows but opted to keep root level default windows out of it. If you extend this auto-save to all kinds of windows, it would automatically serve as a session restore, especially if you can set a flag on isWindowClosing and bring those windows back to life on startup. I understand your concern that preserving all windows by default creates a mess, but as heavy users of your plugin I think we can absolutely assure you that this behavior is very much desired in order to allow TO to fully replace all other session software in Chrome. And lastly but most importantly, thank you for all the great work on this!

>>> I just can't find a workable solution of preserving my session when i need to reset Chrome for whatever reason. >>>


Why not to use Save-Close All Windows button in TO for this (the main TO button actually, it is even carries TO logotype)?


Anyway i plan to fix this issue by reassociate algorithm (so on restart all open windows will try to find own equivalents in the crashed list). Yet slightly busy now on other things (this reasociation is not as straightforward and easy implement as one might think).
+2

Yes, I understand that it involves some heuristics and that there are edge-cases with possibly wrong re-association, if the Chromium improvement does not get implemented. The Save-Close-All button is indeed a workable solution but it has two negatives for me personally: (1) i forget about it sometimes, it's more effort than it should be; (2) once reopened, the last windows are not visually distinct in any way - they only have the (closed Aug 27, ...) label but for me they should stand out more (perhaps bolded or green).

This morning I opened a new windows and then closed it and I realized that if it were autosaved, I'd not be happy. So I agree with your assessment that maybe auto-save every window by default is not the best way to do it.


But how about differentiating between a single window close and a Chrome-wide "exit"? Does the API allow you to distinguish these two cases? If it does, you could auto-save all open windows on "chrome exit" but not auto-save generic windows on single close. You could even flip a flag and auto-restore those windows on Chrome startup if "startup with Chrome" option is checked for TO. This way, you would effectively replace the "continue where i left off" option and people would be happy.

Another question - when Chrome crashes, is it 100% certain that TO would preserve all open windows? The uncertainty about this is another reason for me to stick to "continue where i left off".

-2

>  when Chrome crashes, is it 100% certain that TO would preserve all open windows? 


yes

+1
Unfortunately, this is not the case! I experienced a crash while TO was restoring a crashed window, and this crashed window was not preserved when I restarted after *that* crash.

However, I was able to get the tabs back (but not their relative ordering) by looking at my History. Fortunately, they were all there as the most recent pages open


-2

Well, if for true, i am highly doubtful that this is possible, knowing how the algorithm work.

But good to know.

Soon there will be update that will allow to navigate back in history, and see the tree at any point of the past. Hope it will further secure our precious tabs ; )


the suspended windows (duplicates from last session) only occur when i activate the gmail-offline function "keep apps running in background" like said in your workaround...it's pretty much the same behaviour like the crashed window problem, only without the "crashed" label.

i understand the problem with chrome shutting down apps without time to save something :/

perhaps you could implement an option to recreate the last session (similar to the "continue where i left off"-option from chrome)? i dunno if this would be easier than the reassociation?


i totally would disable the "continue where i left off"-option if it would be possible to restart the last session - but when i do so (by double-clicking on the old window-session), not only the active, but also the suspended tabs are re-opened...or am i missing some knowledge here?

-1

All you mention is valid concerns.


To solve them need implement reassociation. Yet this issue have a lot of corner cases to do it correctly, and it might bring a lot of support hasle. So i am waiting for this Chrome feature to be done:


https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=176030&can=5&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified


(please stare it by the way)


It is exactly about this cases you mention and it must make this reassociation after shut down/restart/crash a one hour toy task for me.


It was promised that the work is going on, yet seems it is stuck. So maybe need to stop wait and to implement ugly workaround in TO. ( Yet it will be cool if actually somebody just do it in Chrome sources. The other people who comment on there chromium issue thread is authors of other well know session managers - so this will be very beneficially for many extensions.)


And, just a quick note about this your paragraph:

>>

but when i do so (by double-clicking on the old window-session), not only the active, but also the suspended tabs are re-opened...or am i missing some knowledge here?

>>
There exist alternative restore. Double-click with ALT pressed - it will restore only the tabs that were open at a moment of save/crash.


Best.

ok, stared :)

lets hope it will be implemented soon...


but the alt-doubleclick only seems to work on windows closed via TO (collaps and hit the "X"), not with crashed ones :/


i don't know how much effort it would take, but perhaps you could implement an option to "auto alt-doubleclick" the last session on startup of chrome? (as an interrim-workaround until the feature is done in chrome)

this way it would be possible to disable "continue where i left off" but still have this behaviour without the issues with TO?

like i said, i've no clue if this is to much effort for an interrim-solution ;)

Just want to say this exact issue also happens on OS X with Chrome 28.0.1500.95 and Tabs Outliner 0.4.73, and Chrome is definitely not crashing.

+4
In my case I do not want Tabs Outliner to maintain my session at all.  I want to let Google Chrome maintain and restore sessions.  For me, Tabs Outliner should only allow me to save windows and tabs that I may want later.

So, I am not interested in having real crashed Windows displayed because Google Chrome will restore them for me if I ask. Also, I will have Chrome set to restore tabs from last time and then Tabs Outliner will display them properly.

Does that make sense?
+2
That's interesting case. Maybe really worth to give an option to not display crashed windows on restart at all.

I never really exit from Chrome. For me it's always a crash, and after such crash i am rarely want to use Chrome restore feature, as this often will restore several hundreds tabs. But for only few windows, it's really maybe have a lot of sense to just always use Chrome Restore.

And yes, this is not properly fixed... need to open this bug again.
For me, I want to avoid having 100's of tabs open so that Chrome is not taking so much memory.

Also, another idea - optionally do a "lazy load" of tabs when restoring a Window.  
+2
By the way this is not fixed at all, I don't see why it is marked fixed.
+2
Just started using TO, and have to say firstly that it is a great idea. Volovyk, my thanks for such a good plugin.

However, this 'crashed' problem is still there, and is really quite annoying as the outliner fills up very quickly with all the tabs from each session and each window. I often have several Chrome windows open on each monitor - each with multiple tabs, and so my TO list is huge. Even using the TO exit button leaves the TO window open.

Also, using the TO exit button just marks the previous session as closed instead of crashed. Not sure this solves the problem at all.
-2
must admit. problem is present again in recent Chrome builds, despite the tries to overcome it.

To spent on this more time need to have this time in a first place. There was expectation that donations will help to continue project development but they all failed.

Plan soon release a paid version with richer functionality. If sales will allow to continue
development then this free version will also be updated and problem will be fixed. I hope.

Yet worth to note that this problem does not affect core audience - tabs hoarders - they never close browser actually. So for them is more important the crash detection and window lost prevention functionality.

Unfortunately when Chrome become normally closed there is no way how this can be detected from extension, so from the extension point of view every close is a crash.

If somebody can invent simple way to distinguishe and remember normal Chrome close from crash i will be happy to integrate such fix. 
+2
Maybe a cheap way to fix this problem is to implement detect and remove duplicate feature? ;)
Seems to be ok if you close the TO popup window first and then exit chrome..?

+8
This is the most anoying thing of the extension, why dont show an option to ignore (dont save) crashed sessions? is a simple solution and efficient
+2
Every time I restart Chrome, my last Window has crashed and I have a new window with just the tabs that were open when I last closed Chrome. I do have the "Continue where I left off" option selected, but I'm concerned that I'll lose all tabs if I uncheck it as someone reported earlier in the thread.
I unchecked "Continue where I left off" and TO still crashes every time I restart Chrome. But at least I don't have duplicates. I tried closing TO first but still no difference.
+1

I don't have this issue anymore. Not sure if it's because I close all my tabs before closing Chrome.

+16
Why you just dont remove the efeature to save crashed session? or put display: none and you are done, you have tons of users requesting the same thing, is very easy to you, add an option HIDE CRASHED SESSION, its very easy, please listen to your users
+8

Well I'm removing this extension just because of this annoying "crashed" sessions. I can't be bothered to clean it manually every day. Other than that it was great extension.

+6

Me too. I have sooo many crashed session spam all the time, even though nothing crashed. Disabeling, plugin is unusable.

+1

Hi OK I've got it.

Would you please confirm the following is correct?

Nothing needs to be implemented. You just need to document this clearly.

Chrome is a memory hog - sometimes it needs to be closed down, it's painful but for its own good!

To close Chrome using TO close every active window from TO popup(s) first.

Then close Chrome with the remaining popup(s) open.

When Chrome is reopened the popup(s) will reopen. From there navigate to the windows (or tabs within those windows) that are needed to open.

This will avoid:-

Duplicate reopened items in same window

Duplicate new windows to those already organised in previous sessions

Items attached to root without an associated window

Seeing organised windows from opened in previous session marked as crashed

After a "crash" my standard operating procedure (with the desired end result) is:


a) I have Chrome reopen all tabs (automatically)

b) Those tabs are registered and shown by TO and shown below all the crashed tabs

c) I use that information to figure out which tabs in the list of crashed windows were open at the time of the crash

d) From the list of crashed windows, I open just those tabs

e) I delete all the windows that were automatically reopened by Chrome

The result: I've got exactly the same windows open as before the crash, and I've still got the info about all non-open tabs at the time of the crash


This is a bit cumbersome, in particular b/c the order of reopened windows does not usually match the order of the list of crashed windows.


Since TO is able to recover the *list* of windows/tabs shown in the TO pop-up at the time of the crash... why is it not able to recover information about which ones were open at the time of the crash? Just store that information in the same way you store the list of tabs [the list that's shown as crashed]. Since TO is able to restore any tab from the list of crashed windows (as happens when you double-click them), why not just use that little bit of extra information to open them automatically? Then tell users to *stop* using the "silly" ;-) option of "continue where I left off". Maybe there's something I'm not getting here...


If it's not possible to store anything other than the list (of crashed windows/tabs), I'd be perfectly happy with an imperfect "knife and fork solution": Add (and store) an "*" at the front or end of the tab titles that are open, remove it when the tab is closed, and use that marker to recognise which windows were open at the time of the crash? (Sure, an obvious flaw is that windows whose title *does* start with "*" would accidentally be opened, but hey, this would still be a gazillion times better than the current situation).


I just can't see that TO can't have all the necessary information available *and stored* at the time of the crash.


If money/time is the real problem... well, I'm willing to shell out quite a bit of money, actually, if I know that it will fix the issue. Not *all* of the money, but perhaps a collaborative effort even just by the people commenting this thread? How much are we possibly talking about? Pleeease. This is such a great extension, it deserves to become even greater!

+7

I paid for the full release of TO and year after year this issue remains unaddressed. I shouldn't need to have the TO window open when quitting Chrome. For me on OS X, quiting chrome by any means without the TO window active is what causes these crash duplicates. Frankly, it's annoying to micromanage software I paid for. I prefer as few windows and processes running at any given time, and TO specifically makes this difficult. There needs to be a fix for this to be worth even running free.

+8

How is this still not fixed after 5 years? Please just let us disable the crash recovery feature of Tabs Outliner.

+9

I'm on paid account. Please fix the issue. This issue is very annoying.

+5

Apart of repeating the obvious once again: JUST IMPLEMENT SIMPLE DISABLING OF CRASH RECOVERY IN TO !!!

- I'd like to also notice one important aspect.


The proposed workaround to avoid using Chrome for closing/restoring session and instead just relying on TO isn't sufficient, because TO can't remember all "back-forward" browsing history related to every tab so it can't restore the exactly same state of windows/tabs as it was at session close - differently to Chrome which can do this and so is preferred for this task.


For example, if I'm reading an article (or forum topic) consisting of several consecutive pages and have passed some of them (so that previous ones become stored in "back" history of the tab) when a link to another (sub-)article/topic appears so that overall thread should "fork" (while still retaining the common subject and reflecting consecutive thread progress!) - and this may happen several times in the same tab (including going back to previous pages to clarify some important things so that I may appear in the middle of forked thread with parts of it both "back" and "forward" from my actual place in tab history) - in this case it becomes very desirable to store all the "back-forward" history of the tab, what as aforementioned here above and generally known, is possible using Chrome session restore function but not possible with TO.



P.S. I also support proposal made by Stein Haugan a few comments above/before:

"If money/time is the real problem... well, I'm willing to shell out quite a bit of money, actually, IF I KNOW THAT IT WILL FIX THE ISSUE"

So, how much is needed - 1000-10000-100000$/€ or what ??

(I still hope that implementing the very simple solution mentioned/repeated at the very beginning of this comment shouldn't be so expensive)

+3

Hello Vladyslav, great thanks for your work and please, when you will open your developement for cooperation on, please note me!

Issue of rising number of groups copy with "(crashed...." in name seems may solve this tweak.

It is working for me on actual Chrome on actual Windows 10 (February 2018) :

How to block/disable Chrome popups "restore pages" (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/wlE4QvTTmRA)

Many thanks to original author, please test it and read notes :

Accurate directory name is 

"\Users\(actual user name)\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default"

In file was only single one occurence of "exit_type": "crashed".

Make backup copy, edit and make file read only..

Please write your next experience.

+1

EDIT - test experience : killing task Chrome from TaskManager Windows 10 :

--unknown groups of new pages are remembered in TO list f.e. like "Window (crashed Wed Feb 28 2018)"

--named known groups of pages are not duplicated..

+5

PLEASE FIX THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

+5

This problem still happens and is annoying...

+2

Love Tabs, but this is so irritating that I often stop using it as it takes a lot of time to clean up the multiple lists.  

+3

Unless the developer vladyslav.volovyk returns to development, we are all out in the cold.  He was last seen a year ago, just as I bought a paid mode for both chrome (still works, but with all of the problems above) and Edge chromium (stopped working with errors when Edge updated to match the latest version of chromium).