tabs.sendMessage()

Sends a single message from the add-on's background scripts (or other privileged scripts, such as popup scripts or options page scripts) and any content scripts that belong to this add-on and are running in the specified tab.

The message will be received in the content scripts by any listeners to the runtime.onMessage event. Listeners may then optionally send a response back to the background script using the sendResponse argument.

Syntax

chrome.tabs.sendMessage(
  tabId,                   // integer
  message,                 // any
  options,                 // optional object
  function(response) {...} // optional function
)

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

Parameters

tabId

integer. ID of the tab whose content scripts we want to send a message to.

message

any. An object that can be serialized to JSON.

optionsOptional

object.

frameIdOptional

integer. Sends the message to a specific frame identified by frameId instead of all frames in the tab.

responseCallbackOptional

function. If you're expecting the receiver to send you a response using sendResponse (see runtime.onMessage), pass a callback function here. The function will be called with the response.

response

any. The JSON response object sent by the handler of the message in the content script. If an error occurs while connecting to the specified tab, 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 an example of a background script that sends a message to the content scripts running in the active tab when the user clicks the browser action. The background script also expect the content script to send a response:

// background-script.js

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

function sendMessageToTab(tabs) {
  if (tabs.length > 0) {
    chrome.tabs.sendMessage(
      tabs[0].id,
      {greeting: "hi from background script"},
      handleResponse
    );
  }
}

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function() {
  chrome.tabs.query({currentWindow: true, active: true},
                    sendMessageToTab);
});

Here's the corresponding content script:

// content-script.js

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

chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(handleMessage);

Example add-ons

• beastify
• cookie-bg-picker

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