File Explorer can restore your tabs after restart, just like a browser

Recently, we reported about the new Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.4580 released by Microsoft in the beta channel. There are a few improvements to the system, but the most important changes were made to the File Explorer app. According to the release notes from the Windows Blog page, you can enable File Explorer to preserve the opened folders after a restart, just like you do with internet browsers.

Restore previous folder windows at logon in File Explorer

Here is how Microsoft explains the new feature in File Explorer:

When “Restore previous folder windows at logon” is enabled in File Explorer, we will also now restore all the extra tabs which you previously had open in each File Explorer window. As part of this work, we have also updated the logic for the “Automatically save my restartable apps and restart them when I sign back in” setting via Settings > Accounts > Sign in options, so that when you enable this, we will automatically enable the File Explorer specific setting for you too.

The Restore previous folder windows at logon function is already available in File Explorer. You can enable it from the Folder Options in File Explorer.

To do that, just click the Start button, type folder options and click on File Explorer Options. Then, go to view, look for Restore previous folder windows at logon, and check its box to enable it.

The novelty, however, is that now, after you log into Windows after a restart, File Explorer will restore all the tabs in File Explorer if the app was running when you restarted the PC. However, for that to work, you also need to enable Automatically save my restartable apps and restart them when I sign back in option from Settings > Accounts > Sign in options in Windows 11.

This option is only available for Windows insiders in the Beta channel, but as phantomofearth reported on X, you can enable this feature you can run vivetool /enable /id:54572881 using ViVeTool.

The folders will open in a new File Explorer tab

Another new File Explorer feature is that newly opened folders from outside the app will open in a new tab, not in a new window:

We’re making a change so that when you launch File Explorer folders from outside of File Explorer (for example, from an app or from the desktop), by default they will now open in a new tab if you have an existing File Explorer window open. If you’d prefer that they continue opening in a new window, you can change this in File Explorer folder options, under General > Browse Folders.

This is very useful because all the opened instances will be neatly organized in a single window. However, as it’s mentioned in the release notes, you can still change that back from the General > Browse Folders menu in File Explorer Options.

Finally, Microsoft also added a new option in File Explorer to snooze or turn off the Start backup reminder that appears in the app’s address bar if you didn’t back up your Documents, Pictures or Desktop folders. To snooze or disable it, just right click the Start backup option on the address bar and select your option.

So, you can access these features right now by using the ViVeTool command. You can also wait until the feature is introduced in the stable version. We have a helpful guide on how to customize and configure File Explorer in Windows 11 if you want to make some changes.

What do you think about the new restore tabs feature in File Explorer? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.