ScreenDetails

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The ScreenDetails interface of the Window Management API represents the details of all the screens available to the user's device.

This information is accessed via the Window.getScreenDetails() method.

Note: ScreenDetails is a live object, meaning that it updates as the available screens change. You can therefore keep querying the same object to get updated values, rather than repeatedly calling getScreenDetails().

EventTarget ScreenDetails

Instance properties

Inherits properties from its parent, EventTarget.

currentScreen Read only Experimental

A single ScreenDetailed object representing detailed information about the screen that the current browser window is displayed in.

screens Read only Experimental

An array of ScreenDetailed objects, each one representing detailed information about one specific screen available to the user's device.

Note: screens only includes "extended" displays, not those that mirror another display.

Events

currentscreenchange Experimental

Fired when the window's current screen changes in some way — for example available width or height, or orientation.

screenschange Experimental

Fired when screens are connected to or disconnected from the system.

Examples

Note: See Multi-window learning environment for a full example (see the source code also).

Basic screen information access

When Window.getScreenDetails() is invoked, the user will be asked for permission to manage windows on all their displays (the status of this permission can be checked using Permissions.query() to query window-management). If the user grants permission, a ScreenDetails object is returned. This object contains details of all the screens available to the user's system.

The below example opens a full-size window on each available display.

js
const screenDetails = await window.getScreenDetails();

// Open a window on each screen of the device
for (const screen of screenDetails.screens) {
  openWindow(
    screen.availLeft,
    screen.availTop,
    screen.availWidth,
    screen.availHeight,
    url,
  );
}

Responding to changes in available screens

You could use the screenschange event to detect when the available screens have changed (perhaps when a screen is plugged in or unplugged), report the change, and update window arrangements to suit the new configuration:

js
const screenDetails = await window.getScreenDetails();

// Return the number of screens
let noOfScreens = screenDetails.screens.length;

screenDetails.addEventListener("screenschange", () => {
  // If the new number of screens is different to the old number of screens,
  // report the difference
  if (screenDetails.screens.length !== noOfScreens) {
    console.log(
      `The screen count changed from ${noOfScreens} to ${screenDetails.screens.length}`,
    );

    // Update noOfScreens value
    noOfScreens = screenDetails.screens.length;
  }

  // Open, close, or rearrange windows as needed,
  // to fit the new screen configuration
  updateWindows();
});

Specifications

Specification
Window Management
# api-screendetails-interface

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also