Run a recovery drill

A recovery drill is a short rehearsal of the loop you would run after data loss: export a backup, verify the file, and restore from it. Practicing while nothing is wrong turns a stressful recovery into steps you have already completed once.

Why rehearse

This version already guards its own risky operations: before a state-replacing action such as loading a session, adopting synced groups, importing from a migration, closing tabs in bulk, or dissolving groups, the extension captures a local recovery snapshot and states that in the confirmation dialog. Those snapshots protect you from a bad click inside the extension.

They do not protect you from everything. A lost browser profile, a reinstalled machine, or a cleared extension storage removes snapshots along with the rest of the data. The part only you can do is keep a backup file outside the browser and know how to bring it back. That loop is what this drill practices.

Export a backup

Steps

1. Open Tab Organizer and select the settings button.
2. In Backup & Export — the first section of the settings — select Export backup (JSON).
3. The browser downloads a file named like tab-organizer-backup-2026-07-22.json. Move or copy it to a location you control, ideally outside the machine you are protecting.

The JSON backup includes your saved sessions, a capture of the current session, tab rules, group names and colors, and custom groups. Export Markdown and Export CSV produce readable summaries of the same data; only the JSON file can be imported back.

The file is generated locally and handed to the browser as a download. The website never receives it; see the website boundary.

Verify the backup file

A backup you have never opened is a hope, not a plan. Before you file it away:

1. Open the file in a text editor.
2. Confirm it starts with readable JSON and contains "type": "tab-organizer-backup".
3. Skim the session names and rule entries to confirm the data you expect is present.
4. Remember that the file is plain, unencrypted JSON containing the URLs of your tabs. Store it as carefully as you would store a bookmarks export.

Import the backup

This is the restore step of the drill, and it is safe to run on a healthy browser: importing a backup merges data into the extension, it does not delete anything.

Steps

1. In Backup & Export, select Import backup (JSON).
2. Choose the backup file you exported and verified.
3. Wait for the status line, for example Backup restored: 5 sessions, 12 rules.
4. Open the session list and the rules settings and confirm the entries you expect are present.

During an import, sessions merge by their IDs, and rules, group names, colors, and custom groups from the backup take precedence on conflicts. Importing the file you just exported therefore leaves your data effectively unchanged — that is what makes the drill repeatable.

Reopen tabs from a backup

In a real recovery you usually also want the tabs back on screen. Importing the backup returns your saved sessions to the extension; loading one of those sessions then recreates its windows and tabs.

Steps

1. Import the backup as described above.
2. Work through the checklist in Before you restore.
3. Select Load session and choose the recovered entry.
4. Read the confirmation dialog: it states that a recovery snapshot of the current state is captured before tabs are replaced.
5. Confirm, then verify the restored tabs against the session you expected.

After the drill

• Repeat the export whenever your sessions, rules, or groups have changed enough that losing them would hurt, and keep more than one generation of backup files.
• If you lose tabs to a bulk action inside the extension, act immediately: the popup offers an Undo for a short time after the action, backed by the same recovery snapshots named in the confirmation dialogs.
• If a restore does not behave as described, record the message shown by the extension and see session troubleshooting.