How to restore OneTab old data on Chrome?

Question

I had around 2600 tabs on OneTab, and they were available till yesterday, but suddenly Chrome browser was not responding so I forcibly closed it and re-opened it, after saving my new tabs I found that OneTab was empty, and there're only those new tabs, the previous 2600 tabs were gone!

Is there any way I can get these tabs back? I thought maybe there's a temporary backup folder in any place inside the computer, knowing that the computer didn't crash but it's only chrome , and that NOW OneTab already saved 112 new tabs.

I found this answer about finding 2 files and copying them, Restore OneTab list of tabs after computer crash but it didn't help because:

1. I found only one of these files.
2. My case is different as I'm not restoring OneTab from Computer to another, it's on the same computer, so I don't have a backup.

How to find the old files?

Answer 1

I had the same problem, and here's what I stumbled upon that worked for me, on a Mac, using Chrome. Hope it does for others as well.

On my Mac, I found OneTab here:

/Users/[myName]/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions/[bigLongString]/1.18_1

Note: the whole point here is to figure out what [bigLongString] is. It may just be a registry number or something, hence the same for everyone using Chrome (at least) on a Mac. If some kind soul knows more than I do about this, and if the string is the same for everyone, then they could save everyone some work.

But until you know otherwise, you'll need to find [bigLongString]. To do that, fire up Terminal, and type:

ls ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/*/Extensions/*/*/onetab*

You'll see lines returned like:

/Users/[yourLoginName]/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions/[bigLongString]/1.18_1/onetab.css

From that line, select and copy what you get for [bigLongString], paste it into your Chrome address bar thusly (without the square braces, just to be clear):

chrome-extension://[biglongstring]/import-export.html

When I did it, I'll be darned if two years' worth of URLs didn't show up again under "Export URLs"! I archived them into a text file, just to be on the safe side, but then I chose "Import URLs" and pasted everything there...and OneTab is alive and well again! (Which is not to say that I think this was a good way to have to solve the problem...)

BTW, I'm now planning to regularly archive my OneTab links ("File-->Save Page As..." in my browser).

Answer 2

I had same issue – the two files mentioned in the old thread were not present, however there was a new folder in C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage named “leveldb”

The steps I used to get my tabs back (IIRC): I extracted the two files from an old backup, renamed leveldb folder to leveldb_OLD, put the files in \Local Storage, fired up Chrome and Hey Presto Onetab was back with tabs.

I closed and reopened Chrome, Onetab tabs still there, but the 2 files had gone and a new leveldb folder had been created, so presumably Onetab is changing the way it stores tabs – what I don’t know is if any other extension/app is also using that folder

I then found I had a more recent backup – with a leveldb folder instead of the two files, and replaced the one just created with that, which worked, giving a slightly more recent tab list. I seem to remember I had to reboot to get it to stick (sorry I can’t remember exactly, this was a late-night desperate recovery session)

I presume just replacing the leveldb folder in one go without the other step would work, but haven’t tried, also don’t know if the leveldb folder is used by anything else

Answer 3

Heres some more links. Need to get developers. https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/76k23b/onetab_lost_all_tabs_recovery/

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome_extensions/comments/2l1elt/onetab_questions_i_have_10000_tabs_saved_and_i/

https://superuser.com/questions/507536/where-does-google-chrome-save-localstorage-from-extensions/1267422

Answer 4

Share what I have encountered, the latest Chrome is automatically updated, causing my Onetab to be unavailable. The list of extensions shows that it may be corrupted, but there are no problems with other extensions. At this point you will see that the Chrome browser provides a [Repair] button. If you click on it, it will reinstall Onetab. The installation folder will be renamed to 1.18_1 [normal should be 1.18_0] and will overwrite the previous data. [I guess, don't operate before backup].

If you encounter a similar situation, stop any operations and back up the data files as much as possible.

C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage\leveldb

or

C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

or any other data that you think might be useful before performing other operations.

Then manually remove the Onetab extension and reinstall it as much as possible to the previous version.

Close the browser completely, then overwrite the current directory (C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage\leveldb) with the backup directory (backup\leveldb) to restart browsing. You will be able to see the previous Onetab.

I used the above method to recover the lost one thousand tabs, thank you for the ideas provided by others, and hope to be helpful.

In short, please believe that Chrome does not arbitrarily delete user-saved data.

If the above method doesn't work, you can try to find a way to open the .ldb file, and you may see the data directly.