How to avoid closing the window in Chrome

Question

I have a habit of hitting windows+E to open explorer, and sometimes I accidentally hit Ctrl+Q which closes the browser.

Now, a lot of responses I've seen to this kind of question (warn before closing multiple tabs, etc.) are things like "why don't you just re-open the browser?"

Which is ok if I were just reading an article, but what if I were in the middle of uploading a file, or streaming a video, or I need to re-authenticate? Especially if you're doing some online shopping with a huge queue behind you and if you accidentally kicked yourself off you'll have to wait another 4 hours to get back in again.

I've read a couple responses from chrome developers saying that the decision was made to avoid "annoying users with unnecessary questions that would take away from their browsing experience" or something, but that's pretty questionable.

I'm also not too fond of using extensions since the permissions that are granted are quite scary (access to ALL surfing, all data on all websites, browsing history, etc).

Is there a solution other than installing an extension? I could write my own extension if necessary (or if there's an open-source extension that I could look at before installing).

Answer 1

This is so far the most annoying bug in Chrome dated since 2008 with over 500 supporters. And it seems a simple option/dialogue to warn when multiple tabs are being closed after those years is still on its way (Bug: #147), so hopefully we'll see it within our lifetime, hopefully. However 7 year old bug is nothing in comparing with 15-year old same bug in Firefox (too easy to hit CTRL+Q instead of CTRL+W). I've find it especially annoying (couldn't find a better word without swearing), when closing one tab (Ctrl+W) and ending up in disaster with multiple windows closure (including different profiles) each with 100+ tabs open with important data (leftovers for later) and live form filled-in, etc. only because my finger moved few millimetres to the left (and I didn't look at the keyboard).

There was a workaround to install Window Close Protector extension before, but it doesn't work anymore.

To vote on this feature/bug, please follow: Warn when closing with multiple tabs open at Google Code.

Other solutions:

• Ubuntu: How can I disable Ctrl+Q for all applications (system wide)?
• OSX: How to disable CMD+q combination?

Answer 2

You are correct that for Chrome this is the reason. I am personally on that side and if I close something, I expect it to close unless there is unsaved work which is what Chrome tries to do. When a download is in progress, you will get a dialog asking for confirmation. If you were just in the middle the article, then you don't really lose anything and the consensus at the time I was on the Chrome team was that you just had to restart the browser and that was fast enough not to be an issue at least in most cases.

Guess you could write an extension or maybe start a never ending download :)

Answer 3

There is a very popular program for windows named "Autohotkey" . With this you can remap the Ctrl-Q shortcut so as not to close your tabs.

Here is some reference