runtime.sendMessage()

Sends a single message to event listeners within your extension or a different extension.

It works just like runtime.connect, but only sends a single message, with an optional response.

If sending to your extension, the runtime.onMessage event will be fired in each page. If sending to a different extension,  runtime.onMessageExternal will be fired.

Syntax

chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
  extensionId,             // optional string
  message,                 // any
  options,                 // optional object
  function(response) {...} // optional function
)

This API is also available as browser.runtime.sendMessage() in a version that returns a promise.

Parameters

extensionIdOptional

string. The ID of the extension to send the message to. If omitted, the message will be sent to your own extension.

message

any. An object that can be serialized to JSON.

optionsOptional

object.

includeTlsChannelIdOptional

boolean. Whether the TLS channel ID will be passed into runtime.onMessageExternal for processes that are listening for the connection event.

functionOptional

Callback function. The function is passed the following arguments:

response

any. The JSON response object sent by the handler of the message. If an error occurs while connecting to the extension, the callback will be called with no arguments and runtime.lastError will be set to the error message.

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Compatibility notes

Edge

• The 'options' parameter is not supported.

Examples

Here's a content script that sends a message to the background script when the user clicks the content window. The message payload is {greeting: "greeting from the content script"}, and the sender also expects to get a response, which is handled in the handleResponse callback:

// content-script.js

function handleResponse(message) {
  console.log("message from the background script: " +
    message.response);
}

function notifyBackgroundPage(e) {
  chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
    {greeting: "greeting from the content script"},
    handleResponse
  );
}

window.addEventListener("click", notifyBackgroundPage);

The corresponding background script looks like this:

// background-script.js

function handleMessage(request, sender, sendResponse) {
  console.log("message from the content script: " +
    request.greeting);
  sendResponse({response: "response from background script"});
}

chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(handleMessage);

Example add-ons

• notify-link-clicks-i18n

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