action

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

Note: This API is available in Manifest V3 or higher. It replaces the Manifest V2 APIs browserAction and, in Chrome and Safari, pageAction.

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 menus API using the action menus.ContextType.

With the action API, you can:

use action.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

action.ColorArray: An array of four integers in the range 0-255 defining an RGBA color.
action.ImageDataType: Pixel data for an image. Must be an ImageData object (for example, from a <canvas> element).

Functions

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

Events

action.onClicked: Fired when a browser action icon is clicked. This event will not fire if the browser action has a popup.

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

Note: This API is based on Chromium's chrome.action API. This documentation is derived from action.json in the Chromium code.