Restarting Brave but Maintaining Windows Taskbar Order

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1

It’s probably in front of me somewhere, but I can’t seem to find it. I searched both Brave help as well as topics here. I simply want to restart/relaunch Brave, but don’t want to restart my PC to do this.

The reason: When my system gets bogged down doing something in the foregroud or background, the Brave tabs on the task bar get rearranged. I prefer to have the tabs in a specific order, but the only way I know to get it back is to restart the PC. It’s there a way to simply restart/relaunch Brave like it does when there is a software update?

Thank you.

Brave Version (check About Brave):
[Version 1.76.82 Chromium: 134.0.6998.178 (Official Build) (64-bit)]

Operating System:
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC

2

@JimL,
Not entirely clear on what you’re asking for here.

Here, you’re referring to the Windows task bar? If so, do you mean the Brave windows that are open get rearranged? Or different profiles? Or something else? Can you share a screenshot of the way you want you taskbar to look and then another one after the rearranging happens so I can get a clear picture of what is going on?

Lastly, to “restart Brave”, you’d simply close the browser then re-open it. Certain actions – such as updating the browser, enabling/disabling flags, a few others – will prompt you to relaunch the browser but there is no action/button to do this on command (as is the case with most other applications).

3

I mean the Brave tabs on the task bar and not the tabs in the browser itself. I don’t know the proper name for these, but to me, they’re both called tabs.

I don’t know why this happens with Brave and only Brave, but I personaly find it annoying.

This is what rearranges itself. I normally only have three Brave tabs/instances running but this doesn’t matter when it comes to the order being changed.
Brave on task bar

The tabs within the instances of Brave stay the same, so no issue there.
Brave tabs

How can I close and reopen Brave without losing the tabs already open? I’m thinking maybe I can possibly terminate one of the Brave instances to crash them all so I can restart Brave, but that sounds kind of risky to me.

4

@JimL

To be safe, establish a routine for creating Windows OS System Restore Points.

Create a new System Restore Point before each experiment. Document each - maintain a handwritten log ← you will be glad you did.

https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/create-system-restore-point-script-windows-10-8-7-vista-xp/

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/create-system-restore-point-in-windows-11.3602/

Bookmark those sites.

Windows Taskbar Tips

5

I’m apparently stil not being clear. I want to keep the tabs on the task bar always in the same order. No, they are not labeled, but I have specific pages open within each tab. If I’m doing something with heavy resource utilization like processing video, the order of the tabs on the Windows task bar changes. I can get them back in the right order if I restart Windows. No restore is needed, but just a reboot. However, this method is very annoying.

I would prefer a simple way to exit Brave and start it again rather than rebooting the system to get the order back. I haven’t a clue why Brave does this tab switching, yet I can’t find a way within Brave to rearrange those tabs to the way they were. I am hoping there’s a simpler way to restart Brave or switch the order of the tabs to what they were.

6

@JimL

You “can’t find a way” in Brave Browser to maintain the order in appearance - from left to right - of the Brave Browser icons [they are not “tabs”] in the Windows OS Taskbar, if/when you restart Brave Browser.

I replied with guidance about the Windows Taskbar, plus information about, how to be prepared for, when things go wrong - while you explore and might engage in Trial and Error.

Because, I want you to succeed in your quest.

I often try to encourage Internet browser users to back up their data, to be prepared.

7

@JimL

Searching online, using search criteria:

arrange order of appearance of Windows OS taskbar icons

One result:

“the order in which buttons appear on the taskbar is entirely dependent on the order in which the windows were opened and there’s no direct way to control it. It’s been that way since Windows 95”

Found one possible solution (that could be, probably is, trouble - and why I suggested, “be prepared”):

Screen Shot 2025-03-29 at 1.55.07 AM
Screen Shot 2025-03-29 at 1.55.07 AM613×593 58.1 KB

Source for that:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/rearrange-or-re-order-taskbar-icons-in-win-11/f1d8d4d7-0eef-4854-986a-4182aae9cd26

You might try:

Create a special bookmarks folder, named “Taskbar_Order”

Then, bookmark the website for each of, say, 7 Brave Browser windows, that you open in sequence.

Those bookmarks should appear in the order that you created them - and placed them - in your “Taskbar_Order” bookmarks folder.

After any restart of the browser, or the computer, you can go down that list - restoring the website windows and order of appearance in the Windows OS Taskbar.

Maybe, as a Feature Request, you would request that Brave developers create such routine, so that, you could “just click a button” and Brave Browser would open the website windows in the aforementioned order.

If you want that, tell @Mattches .

Otherwise, you might write a script, or write a Windows OS batch file, that launches Brave Browser and opens windows to the websites, in the order that you desire. Example:

Open Multiple Websites With a Batch File in Windows 10 & 11
https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/open_multiple_websites.html

I would do that - I mostly use the MacOS, and have actually written AppleScripts to arrange the opening of a sequence of Internet browser windows.

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8

@289wk,

Just wanted to thank you for your info and suggestions. For one, it helped me realize how behind I was on a backup. I cloned the disk but had issues with Windows backup so have a little more investigating there. Anyway, I plan to get back to this soon and will try out tweaker. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, I’m no worse off. Again, thanks!

-Jim

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