tabs

Interact with the browser's tab system.

You can use this API to get a list of opened tabs, filtered by various criteria, and to open, update, move, reload, and remove tabs. You can't directly access the content hosted by tabs using this API, but you can insert JavaScript and CSS into tabs using the tabs.executeScript() or tabs.insertCSS() APIs.

You can use most of this API without any special permission. However:

• to access Tab.url, Tab.title, and Tab.faviconUrl, you need to have the "tabs" permission. In Firefox this also means you need "tabs" to query by URL.
• to use tabs.executeScript() or tabs.insertCSS() you must have the host permission for the tab

Alternatively, you can get these permissions temporarily, only for the currently active tab and only in response to an explicit user action, by asking for the "activeTab" permission.

Types

tabs.MutedInfoReason

Specifies the reason a tab was muted or unmuted.

tabs.MutedInfo

This object contains a boolean indicating whether the tab is muted, and the reason for the last state change.

tabs.Tab

This type contains information about a tab.

tabs.TabStatus

Indicates whether the tab has finished loading.

tabs.WindowType

The type of window that hosts this tab.

tabs.ZoomSettingsMode

Defines whether zoom changes are handled by the browser, by the add-on, or are disabled.

tabs.ZoomSettingsScope

Defines whether zoom changes will persist for the page's origin, or only take effect in this tab.

tabs.ZoomSettings

Defines zoom settings mode, scope, and default zoom factor.

Properties

tabs.TAB_ID_NONE

A special ID value given to tabs that are not browser tabs (for example, tabs in devtools windows).

Functions

tabs.connect()

Sets up a messaging connection between the add-on's background scripts (or other privileged scripts, such as popup scripts or options page scripts) and any content scripts running in the specified tab.

tabs.create()

Creates a new tab.

tabs.captureVisibleTab()

Creates a data URI encoding an image of the visible area of the currently active tab in the specified window.

tabs.detectLanguage()

Detects the primary language of the content in a tab.

tabs.duplicate()

Duplicates a tab.

tabs.executeScript()

Injects JavaScript code into a page.

tabs.get()

Retrieves details about the specified tab.

tabs.getAllInWindow()

Gets details about all tabs in the specified window.

tabs.getCurrent()

Gets information about the tab that this script is running in, as a tabs.Tab object.

tabs.getSelected()

Gets the tab that is selected in the specified window.

tabs.getZoom()

Gets the current zoom factor of the specified tab.

tabs.getZoomSettings()

Gets the current zoom settings for the specified tab.

tabs.highlight()

Highlights one or more tabs.

tabs.insertCSS()

Injects CSS into a page.

tabs.removeCSS()

Removes from a page CSS which was previously injected by calling tabs.insertCSS().

tabs.move()

Moves one or more tabs to a new position in the same window or to a different window.

tabs.query()

Gets all tabs that have the specified properties, or all tabs if no properties are specified.

tabs.reload()

Reload a tab, optionally bypassing the local web cache.

tabs.remove()

Closes one or more tabs.

tabs.sendMessage()

Sends a single message to the content script(s) in the specified tab, with an optional callback to run when a response is sent back. The runtime.onMessage event is fired in each content script running in the specified tab for the current extension.

tabs.sendRequest()

Sends a single request to the content script(s) in the specified tab, with an optional callback to run when a response is sent back. Deprecated: use tabs.sendMessage() instead.

tabs.setZoom()

Zooms the specified tab.

tabs.setZoomSettings()

Sets the zoom settings for the specified tab.

tabs.update()

Navigate the tab to a new URL, or modify other properties of the tab.

Events

tabs.onActivated

Fires when the active tab in a window changes. Note that the tab's URL may not be set at the time this event fired.

tabs.onActiveChanged

Fires when the selected tab in a window changes. Deprecated: use tabs.onActivated instead.

tabs.onAttached

Fired when a tab is attached to a window, for example because it was moved between windows.

tabs.onCreated

Fired when a tab is created. Note that the tab's URL may not be set at the time this event fired.

tabs.onDetached

Fired when a tab is detached from a window, for example because it is being moved between windows.

tabs.onHighlightChanged

Fired when the highlighted or selected tabs in a window change. Deprecated: use tabs.onHighlighted instead.

tabs.onHighlighted

Fired when the highlighted or selected tabs in a window change.

tabs.onMoved

Fired when a tab is moved within a window.

tabs.onRemoved

Fired when a tab is closed.

tabs.onReplaced

Fired when a tab is replaced with another tab due to prerendering.

tabs.onSelectionChanged

Fires when the selected tab in a window changes. Deprecated: use tabs.onActivated instead.

tabs.onUpdated

Fired when a tab is updated.

tabs.onZoomChange

Fired when a tab is zoomed.

Browser compatibility

Chrome incompatibilities

• Firefox treats highlighted and active as the same, since Firefox has no concept of selecting multiple tabs.
• In Firefox, you need the tabs permission if you want to include url in the queryInfo parameter to tabs.query().

• In Firefox, relative URLs passed into tabs.executeScript() or tabs.insertCSS() are resolved relative to the current page URL. In Chrome, these URLs are resolved relative to the add-on's base URL. To work cross-browser, you can specify the path as an absolute URL, starting at the add-on's root, like this:

  /path/to/script.js

• In Firefox, you can't open (using tabs.create), or navigate to (using tabs.update) privileged URLs:
  • chrome: URLs
  • javascript: URLs
  • data: URLs
  • privileged about: URLs (for example, about:config, about:addons, about:debugging)
• Additionally, the following deprecated properties will not be supported:
  • sendRequest()
  • getSelected()
  • onActiveChanged
  • onHighlightChanged
  • onSelectionChanged

Example add-ons

• beastify
• Bookmark it!
• chill-out
• cookie-bg-picker
• context-menu-demo
• history-deleter
• open-my-page-button
• tabs-tabs-tabs

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