Session manager for Edge: built in options and add-ons

Microsoft Edge does not have a feature called "session manager". It has three built-in pieces that together cover part of the job: a startup setting that reopens your last session, Command-Shift-T (Ctrl-Shift-T on Windows) to bring back closed tabs, and Edge Workspaces for keeping named sets of tabs. What Edge lacks is a way to save a snapshot of every open window under a name, keep many of those snapshots, and restore any one of them later. For that, the two extensions most people use are Tab Session Manager, available in the Edge Add-ons store, and Session Buddy, which installs from the Chrome Web Store.

Which one you need depends on what you are trying to protect against: a crash, a messy desktop, or losing a working set of tabs you will want again in a month. The sections below go through what each built-in option actually saves, what the two extensions add, and where each approach falls short. Requirements, settings names and store listings were checked on Microsoft's, Google's and the developers' own pages on October 18, 2026.

What Edge saves on its own

Restore the last session at startup

In Edge, open Settings and more (the three dots), choose Settings, then "Start, home, and new tab page". The startup section decides what Edge shows when it launches. Microsoft's RestoreOnStartup policy documentation lists the four behaviours available, which mirror the choices in that settings page:

Option	What happens at launch
Open a new tab	A blank new tab page
Restore the last session	Every window and tab from the last time Edge closed
Open a list of URLs	A fixed set of pages you choose
Open a list of URLs and restore the last session	Both of the above (Edge 125 and later)

Restoring the last session is the closest thing Edge has to automatic session saving, and it is enough for many people. Two details from the same Microsoft page are worth knowing. First, restoring the last session disables settings that act on exit, such as clearing browsing data on exit and session-only cookies. If you rely on Edge wiping cookies when it closes, these two choices conflict. Second, this is a single slot: it remembers only the most recent session, and the next time you close Edge, that snapshot is replaced.

Reopen closed tabs

Microsoft's keyboard shortcuts list for Edge gives Command-Shift-T on a Mac (Ctrl-Shift-T on Windows) to reopen the last closed tab and switch to it. This is a recovery tool for accidents, not a way to organise anything.

Edge Workspaces

Workspaces are Edge's answer to "keep this project's tabs together and come back later". According to Microsoft's Getting started with Edge Workspaces page, you open one by selecting Search tabs in the top corner, then Manage workspaces. The New Workspace drop-down offers "Create workspace with X tabs" or "Create blank workspace". You give it a name and theme, choose Done, and it opens in a new browser window.

The requirements matter more than most guides admit:

• A desktop running Windows 10, Windows 11 or macOS.
• Microsoft Edge version 144 or later.
• Signing in to Edge with a Microsoft account or a Microsoft Entra ID (work or school) account.

Microsoft has also changed what Workspaces do. The same page compares the previous and the new version. The new Workspaces are for individual use only: sharing, collaboration and inviting others are no longer supported, locking tabs is no longer supported, OneDrive storage is no longer required, and the menu sorts workspaces by most recently used rather than in the order you created them. If a guide tells you to share a workspace link with a colleague, it describes the older version.

To keep workspaces in step across devices, Microsoft says to open Settings, select Sync under Profile settings, and turn on "Workspaces and Tab Groups".

Sleeping tabs are not lost tabs

One more built-in behaviour often gets mistaken for a session problem. Edge puts tabs to sleep when they are not in use, to free memory and CPU. Microsoft's sleeping tabs page states that tabs go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity by default, and that the delay can be changed in settings anywhere from 30 seconds to 12 hours. A sleeping tab stays in the tab strip and reloads when you select it. If a web app such as mail or chat seems to have "reset" when you come back to it, it was most likely asleep rather than closed, and no session manager is needed. The fix is to keep that site active in the sleeping tabs settings, or to lengthen the delay.

Where the built-in options run out

Put together, Edge covers crash recovery (startup restore), undo (reopen closed tab) and named tab sets that sync (Workspaces). The gaps are specific:

• No history of sessions. Startup restore keeps one snapshot. There is no list of last Tuesday's windows to go back to.
• No export. You cannot save a session to a file, send it to another browser, or keep an archive outside your Microsoft account.
• Workspaces need a signed-in account. If you use Edge without signing in, or in a profile where sign-in is managed by your employer, Workspaces may not be available.
• One workspace per window. Each workspace opens in its own window. That is tidy, but it is not the same as saving the state of four windows at once.

This is the space the extensions fill.

Tab Session Manager

Tab Session Manager is an open source extension by a developer who publishes as Sienori. It is available in the Edge Add-ons store, and also for Chrome and Firefox. The project's GitHub repository describes it as saving and restoring the state of windows and tabs, with automatic saving, and lists it under the MPL-2.0 licence. On October 18, 2026, the Edge Add-ons listing showed version 7.4.0 with an average rating of 3.7 from 80 ratings.

The store description lists what it does:

• Save and restore windows and tabs.
• Manage sessions with a name and tags.
• Save automatically when a window is closed, and at regular intervals.
• Import and export sessions.
• Cloud sync.

For Edge users, the automatic saving is the main reason to install it. Instead of a single "last session" slot, you get a running list of snapshots, so a window you closed by mistake on Monday is still there on Thursday. Import and export means a session can be moved between Edge, Chrome and Firefox, or kept as a file.

One limitation is visible on the project's own site: tab groups are handled by a separate companion extension, "Save Tab Groups for Tab Session Manager", which is listed for Chrome. If tab groups are central to how you work in Edge, test that a restored session brings them back the way you expect before you rely on it.

Session Buddy

Session Buddy is a long-running tab and bookmark manager. It is published on the Chrome Web Store, where its listing showed version 4.1.2 and 1,000,000 users on October 18, 2026. Edge can install it from there. Microsoft's help page on adding extensions from the Chrome Web Store explains the steps: open the Chrome Web Store in Edge, open the extension's page, choose to add it, and if prompted, select "Allow extensions from other stores", then Allow.

The Session Buddy website lists what it is built for:

• Saving open tabs with one click and restoring them exactly as left, either as full sessions or selected tabs, into the original windows, a single window or the current window.
• Restoring window positions, pinned tabs and incognito states.
• Recovering open tabs after a browser crash or system restart, and going back in time to view tabs as they were at a past moment.
• Collections for organising bookmarks by topic or project.
• Copying tabs as links, Markdown, CSV or JSON, with support for more than 15 import and export formats.
• Local storage only: the site states that bookmarks and tab history are stored on your device, never on any server, and that no login is required.

That last point is the main difference from Tab Session Manager. Session Buddy keeps everything on the machine and has no cloud sync. Tab Session Manager offers cloud sync. Which is better depends on whether you want sessions available on a second computer or prefer that they never leave the first.

Choosing between them

	Edge startup restore	Edge Workspaces	Tab Session Manager	Session Buddy
Where it comes from	Built in	Built in (Edge 144+)	Edge Add-ons store	Chrome Web Store
Account needed	No	Microsoft account or Entra ID	No (optional for sync)	No
Keeps several past sessions	No, only the last	Named sets of tabs	Yes, with auto save	Yes, with history
Export to a file	No	No	Yes	Yes, 15+ formats
Sync between computers	Through Edge sync	Through Edge sync	Cloud sync	No, local only

A rough rule follows from the table. If crashes and accidental closes are the only worry, the built-in startup restore plus Command-Shift-T is enough. If you want named project sets that follow you between a work and home PC, and you already sign in to Edge, use Workspaces. If you want a log of sessions you can roll back to, or you need to move sessions between browsers, install Tab Session Manager. If you want the same but never want the data to leave your computer, use Session Buddy.

When the real problem is not sessions

Session managers answer the question of where the tabs went. A different problem looks similar and is often mistaken for it: the same few web apps, such as mail, chat and a calendar, mixed into the same tab strip as everything else, sometimes with two accounts of the same service fighting for one sign-in. Saving and restoring sessions does not separate those accounts, because every tab in an Edge profile shares one set of cookies.

People who hit this usually end up with one Edge profile per account, which works but multiplies windows, or with a browser that keeps each web app in its own window with its own sign-in. For the second approach on a Mac, the workspaces page explains how isolated containers keep accounts apart, and the features overview lists what else such a tool includes.

What to change first

Open Edge's "Start, home, and new tab page" settings and choose to restore the last session, unless you depend on clearing cookies on exit. Add Tab Session Manager only once you have lost a session you wanted back. If the tabs you keep restoring are really the same web apps and accounts every day, a SpaceDeck workspace keeps them open as separate apps instead.