browserAction

Read and modify attributes of and listen to clicks on the browser toolbar button defined with the browser_action manifest key.

A browser action is a button in the browser's toolbar.

You can associate a popup with the button. Like a web page, the popup is specified using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. JavaScript running in the popup gets access to the same WebExtension APIs as your background scripts, but its global context is the popup, not the current page displayed in the browser. To affect web pages, you need to communicate with them via messages.

If you specify a popup, it is shown — and the content loaded — when the user clicks the icon. If you do not specify a popup, an event is dispatched to your extension when the user clicks the icon.

The button also has a context menu, and you can add items to this menu with the {{WebExtAPIRef("menus")}} API using the browser_action {{WebExtAPIRef("menus.ContextType")}}.

With the browserAction API, you can:

• use {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.onClicked")}} to listen for clicks on the icon.
• get and set the icon's properties — icon, title, popup, and so on. You can get and set these globally across all tabs or for a tab by passing the tab ID as an additional argument.

Types

• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.ColorArray")}}
  • : An array of four integers in the range 0-255 defining an RGBA color.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.ImageDataType")}}
  • : Pixel data for an image. Must be an ImageData object (for example, from a {{htmlelement("canvas")}} element).

Functions

• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.setTitle()")}}
  • : Sets the browser action's title. This will be displayed in a tooltip.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.getTitle()")}}
  • : Gets the browser action's title.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.setIcon()")}}
  • : Sets the browser action's icon.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.setPopup()")}}
  • : Sets the HTML document to be opened as a popup when the user clicks on the browser action's icon.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.getPopup()")}}
  • : Gets the HTML document set as the browser action's popup.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.openPopup()")}}
  • : Open the browser action's popup.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.setBadgeText()")}}
  • : Sets the browser action's badge text. The badge is displayed on top of the icon.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.getBadgeText()")}}
  • : Gets the browser action's badge text.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.setBadgeBackgroundColor()")}}
  • : Sets the badge's background color.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.getBadgeBackgroundColor()")}}
  • : Gets the badge's background color.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.setBadgeTextColor()")}}
  • : Sets the badge's text color.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.getBadgeTextColor()")}}
  • : Gets the badge's text color.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.getUserSettings()")}}
  • : Gets the user-specified settings for the browser action.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.enable()")}}
  • : Enables the browser action for a tab. By default, browser actions are enabled for all tabs.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.disable()")}}
  • : Disables the browser action for a tab, meaning that it cannot be clicked when that tab is active.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.isEnabled()")}}
  • : Checks whether the browser action is enabled or not.

Events

• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.onClicked")}}
  • : Fired when a browser action icon is clicked. This event will not fire if the browser action has a popup.
• {{WebExtAPIRef("browserAction.onUserSettingsChanged")}}
  • : Fired when a change occurs in the user-specified settings that affect an extension's browser action.

{{WebExtExamples("h2")}}

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}}

[!NOTE] This API is based on Chromium's chrome.browserAction API. This documentation is derived from browser_action.json in the Chromium code.

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