
Ask HN: Why can't Chrome understand difference in closing windows and crashes? - logicallee
I&#x27;m really angry.  I&#x27;ve asked for this from Chrome developers multiple times: when my chrome windows - all of them - crash in private mode, I want to be able to reopen them, because I didn&#x27;t close them.<p>I&#x27;ve just lost over 10 hours of reading that I had opened to work through.  (Part of many reasons that I use private mode is that I don&#x27;t like autocomplete and when I&#x27;m done reading about a subject I can simply remember it, I never need it to pop up when I start typing in the URL bar, etc etc.  If I need something permanently, I save it.)<p>So since Chrome developers don&#x27;t seem to be able to understand the difference, maybe I&#x27;m missing something.  Does anyone know why they cannot differentiate a Crash from me closing private windows?  The promise when you open such a tab is &quot;Pages you view in incognito tabs won’t stick around in your browser’s history, cookie store, or search history after you’ve closed all of your incognito tabs&quot; and not &quot;... after you’ve closed all of your incognito tabs OR THE BROWSER CRASHES.&quot;<p>This is extremely frustrating.  This was very important reading for me that I spent many hours collecting so that I could focus on it.  I have tried add-ons and they don&#x27;t work.  I just want Chrome to meet its promise and have these tabs and windows open untiL <i>I</i> (not a crash) has closed all of them.  They could at least make it an option.<p>I hope someone can clear up my thinking.  I&#x27;ve just lost a devastating amount of my time.  Now all I have is a paper checklist of the subjects, for me to again repeat my background research into.  This doesn&#x27;t seem a fair burden on the user, to have to use a pen and paper to do Chrome&#x27;s developers&#x27; job for them: <i>i.e.</i> to let me read what I&#x27;ve opened and not close it and make it disappear without any way to get it back, and not at my request.<p>Do I really need to use pen and paper here? At least let me set this behavior as an option.
======
smt88
Private mode is explicitly about not remembering things. If I'm using private
mode, I don't care how the browser exits. I want all the history gone (and
never stored on disk in the first place). Also, Chrome sometimes crashes
during shutdown (after I close the window), and I'd never know my session was
secretly saved.

> _Do I really need to use pen and paper here?_

No. Use bookmark folders and delete them when you're done. Or just clear your
autocomplete.

This sounds like your personal problem with the way you use Chrome and not
something that should affect other users. You may want to try Firefox or
Vivaldi[1], which have more customization options.

1\. [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/03/hands...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/03/hands-on-with-vivaldi-the-new-web-browser-for-power-users/)

~~~
logicallee
Chrome already has multiple (many) processes. If a process were running when
Chrome crashes that does nothing more than display a new window (instantly)
"Chrome is still running even though it's crashed. Since you didn't ask to
close your private windows, would you like to reopen them now? If you do not
reopen them they will be lost forever [Keep browsing] [Exit]? "?

Who said anything about "disk"? Or, what, it is impossible for Chrome to make
two different programs that don't both crash at the same time?

It would be different if I asked it to account for the state that power goes
out. I just want it to deal with the state that I didn't intend to close a
session - that it should still be going but the browser crashed.

Finally, what do you think about adding a password functionality, so that
typing a password can enable you to reopen the exact session associated with
that password? Then it could be saved to disk at the user's request, password-
protected. For example I would use this after I have opened many documents for
reading, to ensure that if the whole session crashes then I can recover it
with a password, from a list that shows only the date of the session and when
it ended.

That would surely be sufficient, no? Especially if you are allowed to delete
these "saved" but password-protected sessions.

but, really, I don't need this. Power loss isn't what makes me lose these
sessions: Chrome crashing, by itself and unprompted, is what does.

so another process that keeps things still in-memory and immediately pops up
saying it is still running and allowing me to continue, is more than enough.

>Use bookmark folders and delete them when you're done.

RIGHT! Like this:

[http://i.imgur.com/lQOiuEs.png](http://i.imgur.com/lQOiuEs.png)

Where I make a folder called "delete if no crash".

In other words: "Folder! Important future work for me: delete this folder if
Chrome does _NOT_ fuck up and crash. The reason for this folder is just as a
Contingency in CASE Chrome fucks up and crashes".

And then manually have a subfolder for each window, because it is not possible
to save a set of folders for every open window, just the tabs in the current
window.

Is it really fair to make the user manually save a folder in case Chrome
decides NOT TO DO ITS ONE JOB which is displaying web pages without crashing?

Displaying a web page without crashing is the minimum viable product for
Chrome. That is its most basic, essential job.

I shouldn't have to figure out how to manually work around it not being able
to do its most essential function.

Of course, in 95% of cases it's great. that's why I use it. Please allow me to
select "actually, keep doing your job! don't exit yet" to pop up when the
Browser suddenly stops functioning as hard as when a kernel panic or blue
screen of death brings down the operating system.

I'm not the one "using it wrong" for not manually making contingencies for the
browser fucking up.

------
romanovcode
> crash in private mode, I want to be able to reopen them, because I didn't
> close them.

I remember a post couple of months ago here, on HN about the fact that Edge is
in fact remembering the tabs if the browser crashes on Private Mode.

The outrage was huge and people were like "WTF Microsoft!?". I bet they
implemented the feature because of some manager had same thought process as
you and told the engineers to do so.

This is working as intended, browser should _NOT_ remember anything you do
when you are in private mode so it should _NOT_ store any information
(including opened websites) anywhere even for the case that browser crashes.

~~~
logicallee
It means they fucked it up. There needs to be a second process that
immediately throws a window up when the main browser crashes so that there is
no crash. It just keeps running. It's that simple.

~~~
twblalock
It's not simple. What would prevent the new window from crashing for the same
reason the original window crashed?

~~~
logicallee
>It's not simple.

It is that simple.

>What would prevent the new window from crashing for the same reason the
original window crashed?

The same thing that prevents every other application on my computer from
crashing whenever Google Chrome does? Why do none of my other programs crash?

Just write it in a different language by a different team and more securely
and have it call the open tabs and windows over an API and when Chrome
crashes, throw up an option to reopen them. Done. This is a 200 KB program.

But I guess a company with an $11B R&D budget couldn't possibly make a 200 KB
minimum viable product. (A minimum viable product for a web browser is a
window that keeps a web page open.)

If their $11 billion R&D budget isn't enough, they need to change this
language:

    
    
       You’ve gone incognito
    
       Pages you view in incognito tabs won’t stick around in your
       browser’s history, cookie store, or search history after you’ve closed
       all of your incognito tabs. Any files you download or bookmarks you
       create will be kept.
    
       However, you aren’t invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your
       browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the
       websites you visit.
    
    

To this language:

    
    
       You’ve gone incognito
    
       Pages you view in incognito tabs won’t stick around in your
       browser’s history, cookie store, or search history after you’ve closed
       all of your incognito tabs *OR GOOGLE CHROME UNEXPECTEDLY CRASHES*.
       Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be kept.
    
       However, you aren’t invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your
       browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the
       websites you visit.
    
    
    

Because they are not keeping their current promise of keeping this stuff until
_I_ close them.

But hey, I guess there's only so much $11 billion can do. Maybe in twenty
years they can keep a web page open for me until I close it.

------
tokenizerrr
Use bookmarks. It's what they're there for.

~~~
logicallee
Bookmarks are there so that I have to cycle through 12 windows, saving each
one into a bookmark called "DELETE ON 6-23-2017 IF CHROME DOES NOT CRASH, JUST
AN EMERGENCY SAVE 1", for the first window, "DELETE ON 6-23-2017 IF CHROME
DOES NOT CRASH, JUST AN EMERGENCY SAVE 2", for the second window, and so on
through 12 windows?

I think we can all agree that that's a LITTLE silly, wouldn't you say? It
takes more than a minute to do so. Let me ask you this then: should it take me
a full minute to do this? Could I at least have a way of automating this?

There is no way to save a set of bookmarks with every open tab in every
window. Or let me know how to do this so I can at least automate it.

