Block Opera from opening a New Tab Page on Start

I have configured all my web browsers to restore the last browsing session whenever they are launched on a system; that's handy as it allows me to continue where I left off, and to keep a number of sites open in the browser without having to worry about losing them or having to restore them through other means.

The Opera web browser supports session restore as well but for some time now, I noticed that the browser would always open a blank page next to all the tabs from the previous session.

While that may be useful to some users of the browser, I found myself closing the blank tab that displayed just the start page of the browser more often than not. One of the main issues that I had with that was that it focused the New Tab page automatically when the browser started.

Again, some users may like it as they can run searches or interact with content displayed on the New Tab page right away.

Thankfully, after some digging around, I found a way to disable the behavior. Once changed, Opera will just load the tabs of the previous browsing session when started and not a New Tab page as well.

Here is how you make the change in current versions of the Opera web browser:

1. Activate the Opera Menu at the top left and select Settings. You may use Ctrl-P alternatively to open the Settings, or load opera://settings instead which does open the preferences as well.
2. Select Advanced and scroll down on the page until you get to the "on startup" section on the Settings page. You may also run a search for startup instead to display only that preference group.
3. Flip the state of Display the start page first under "Retain tabs from previous session" to disable the feature that loads a new tab page whenever Opera starts.

I suggest you test the change by closing Opera and opening the browser again. If everything worked out, Opera should just load the tabs of the previous browsing session.

Now You: Do you make use of session restore?

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