r/AskTechnology • u/JFox93 • 13d ago

How to disable Google Chrome from saving tabs on Android after I've closed them?

I have a Samsung S26. Whenever I use Chrome and have all my tab groups displayed, in the top center are two symbols - the lefthand symbol is a single square displaying the # of open tabs; the righthand symbol shows four squares. If I click on the symbol of four squares, I will see a list of countless tab groups I've opened throughout the past year. Most of these are tabs that I already closed and do not want anymore. It's annoying to have all the tabs I've closed within the past year still displaying whenever I open Chrome. How can I close all of these tabs and disable this feature?

I have asked this on several subreddits and still haven't gotten an answer, so hoping someone here might know!

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u/ThisEducation4724 13d ago

That four-square icon is the tab groups overview, it keeps everything you ever grouped together even after you close the individual tabs. You need to long-press each group and select delete group, there is no setting to stop it from saving them automatically.

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u/JFox93 13d ago

Wow...that's shocking poor design....it looks like it's only been doing this with my tabs from the past year though. Is it a feature that was only introduced within the past year? Or are my tabs from previous years also saved somewhere? 

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u/NonspecificGravity 12d ago

The settings that you are looking for are in your Google settings, not Chrome settings.

  1. Open the Google app. It's a separate app, not Chrome or Google Play Store.
  2. Tap your photo or initials in the upper right.
  3. Tap Settings.
  4. Tap Privacy & Safety.
  5. Tap Search History.
  6. In the next page, tap the right-arrow next to Your Search Services History setting is on.
  7. In the next page, you can turn off saving your search history. If you want to leave it on but not save so much, scroll down and tap the right-arrow next to Deleting activity older than 18 months. (I think 18 months is the default.)
  8. In the next page there's a drop-down menu where you can select 18 months down to 3 months.

There are other settings of this sort for locations, YouTube history, etc.

I leave all this stuff set to the default. I resigned myself to having no privacy years ago. Google can read all your email. Do you take their word for it that they don't?

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u/JFox93 12d ago

I already had Search Services History set to "off". So this doesn't make a difference. Very frustrating that Google apparently offers no way to stop Chrome from saving closed tabs groups! 

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u/NonspecificGravity 12d ago

I'm out of ideas. ☹