runtime.sendNativeMessage()

Sends a single message from a WebExtension to a native application.

This takes two mandatory parameters: the name of the native application and a JSON object which is the message to send it. The browser will launch the native application and deliver the message.

It also takes one optional parameter, which is a callback function. The first message sent by the native application is treated as a response to the sendNativeMessage() call, and will be passed into the callback. Note that you can't use runtime.onMessage to get responses from the application: you must use the callback function instead.

A new instance of the application is launched for call to runtime.sendNativeMessage(). The browser will terminate the native application after getting a reply. To terminate a native application, the browser will close the pipe, give the process a few seconds to exit gracefully, and then kill it if it has not exited.

For more information, see Native messaging.

Syntax

chrome.runtime.sendNativeMessage(
  application,             // string
  message,                 // object
  function(response) {...} // optional function
)

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

Parameters

application

string. The name of the native application. This must match the "name" property in the native application's manifest file.

message

object. A JSON object that will be sent to the native application.

functionOptional

A callback function. The function is passed the following arguments:

response

object. A JSON object containing the response message sent by the native application. If an error occurs while connecting to the native application, 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.

Examples

Here's a background script that sends a "ping" message to the "ping_pong" app and logs the response, whenever the user clicks the browser action:

function onResponse(response) {
  console.log("Received " + response);
}

/*
On a click on the browser action, send the app a message.
*/
chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(() => {
  console.log("Sending:  ping");
  chrome.runtime.sendNativeMessage(
    "ping_pong",
    "ping",
    onResponse);
});

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