BroadcastChannel

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since March 2022.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The BroadcastChannel interface represents a named channel that any browsing context of a given origin can subscribe to. It allows communication between different documents (in different windows, tabs, frames or iframes) of the same origin. Messages are broadcasted via a message event fired at all BroadcastChannel objects listening to the channel, except the object that sent the message.

Constructor

BroadcastChannel(): Creates an object linking to the named channel.

Instance properties

This interface also inherits properties from its parent, EventTarget.

BroadcastChannel.name Read only: Returns a string, the name of the channel.

Instance methods

This interface also inherits methods from its parent, EventTarget.

BroadcastChannel.postMessage(): Sends the message, of any type of object, to each BroadcastChannel object listening to the same channel.
BroadcastChannel.close(): Closes the channel object, indicating it won't get any new messages, and allowing it to be, eventually, garbage collected.

Events

This interface also inherits events from its parent, EventTarget.

message: Fired when a message arrives on the channel. Also available via the onmessage property.
messageerror: Fired when a message arrives that can't be deserialized. Also available via the onmessageerror property.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard # broadcasting-to-other-browsing-contexts

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser