Window: confirm() method
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
window.confirm()
instructs the browser to display a dialog with an optional message, and to wait until the user either confirms or cancels the dialog.
Under some conditions — for example, when the user switches tabs — the browser may not actually display a dialog, or may not wait for the user to confirm or cancel the dialog.
Syntax
confirm()
confirm(message)
Parameters
message
Optional-
A string you want to display in the confirmation dialog.
Return value
A boolean indicating whether OK (true
) or Cancel (false
) was selected.
If a browser is ignoring in-page dialogs, then the returned value is always false
.
Examples
Confirming before an action
The following example shows how to check the returned value of a confirmation dialog.
When the user clicks the OK button, we call window.open()
, and if the user clicks Cancel, we print some text to a <pre>
element.
<button id="windowButton">Open new tab</button>
<pre id="log"></pre>
const windowButton = document.querySelector("#windowButton");
const log = document.querySelector("#log");
windowButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
if (window.confirm("Do you want to open in new tab?")) {
window.open("https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/open");
} else {
log.innerText = "Glad you're staying!";
}
});
Notes
Dialog boxes are modal windows — they prevent the user from accessing the rest of the program's interface until the dialog box is closed.
For this reason, you should not overuse any function that creates a dialog box or a modal window.
Alternatively, a <dialog>
element can be used for confirmations.
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML # dom-confirm-dev |
Browser compatibility
See also
<dialog>
elementwindow.alert()
window.prompt()
- Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo on A List Apart (2017)