Closing last tab should open a new tab (not exit browser)

[bsclifton]

Carried over from brave/browser-laptop#5873

Description

If there is only one window and you close all the tabs, Brave will exit on Linux and Windows. Instead of exiting, it should open a new tab

On macOS, when the last tab is closed the browser is left open with no windows. This proposal would also open a new tab

[nCrazed]

This sounds like how one of the chrome extensions used to work. The problem was that it would sometimes not open the new tab fast enough so the window would die anyway.

[franco27]

I close the last tab and Brave closes.
Closing a last open tab should not cause the browser to close.

[lostpebble]

Yes please. For some reason I do this often, and coming from Chrome where it simply gave me a dashboard with recently opened tabs, this is surprising behavior.

I guess sometimes you just want a clean slate to start with again. Maybe its a lil OCD, but would be nice to have the option at least.

[notDavid]

Fyi, the Firefox equivalent of this is setting browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab to false :

This preference controls whether closing the last tab, closes the window.

True: Close window when closing last tab (default)
False: Do not close the window when closing last tab (pre Firefox 3.5 behavior)

Note: Changing to False prevents Firefox from closing the window when you close the last tab such as with Ctrl+W, and subsequently from closing Firefox itself when closing the last tab of the last Firefox window.

[MadhaviSeelam]

Verification Passed using

Brave	1.43.53 Chromium: 104.0.5112.69 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
Revision	7ce2902023c722af8564068e6b26e934b83fd774-refs/branch-heads/5112@{#1213}
OS	Windows 11 Version 21H2 (Build 22000.795)

Steps:

• Install 1.43.53
• launch Brave
• open multiple tabs
• open brave://settings/system
• toggle OFF Close window when closing last tab
• close all the tabs except last one
• confirmed when last tab is closed, a new tab opened
• when the browser window is closed, close all tabs warning message is displayed as it's the existing functionality
• toggle ON Close window when closing last tab
• closing all tabs, closes the browser

2022-07-29_15h53_13.mp4

---

Verification passed on

Brave	1.43.78 Chromium: 104.0.5112.102 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
Revision	8e5396254975ef939f2ef7d0bd334e48a052b536-refs/branch-heads/5112@{#1478}
OS	Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Verified able to turn of Close window when closing last tab

Verified when closing last tab a new tab is created