Chrome incompatibilities

Extensions built with WebExtension APIs are designed to be compatible with Chrome and Opera extensions: as far as possible, extensions written for those browsers should run on Firefox with minimal changes.

However, Firefox currently has support for only a limited set of the features and APIs supported by Chrome and Opera. We're working on adding more support, but many features are not yet supported, and we may never support some.

JavaScript APIs

Callbacks and the chrome.* namespace

In Chrome, extensions access privileged JavaScript APIs using the chrome namespace:

chrome.browserAction.setIcon({path: "path/to/icon.png"});

WebExtensions access the equivalent APIs using the browser namespace:

browser.browserAction.setIcon({path: "path/to/icon.png"});

Many of the APIs are asynchronous. In Chrome, asynchronous APIs use callbacks to return values, and runtime.lastError to communicate errors:

function logCookie(c) {
  if (chrome.extension.lastError) {
    console.error(chrome.extension.lastError);
  } else {
    console.log(c);
  }
}

chrome.cookies.set(
  {url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/"},
  logCookie
);

The equivalent WebExtensions APIs use promises instead:

function logCookie(c) {
  console.log(c);
}

function logError(e) {
  console.error(e);
}

var setCookie = browser.cookies.set(
  {url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/"}
);
setCookie.then(logCookie, logError);

Firefox supports both `chrome` and `browser` namespaces

As a porting aid, the Firefox implementation of WebExtensions supports chrome, using callbacks, as well as browser, using promises. This means that many Chrome extensions will just work in Firefox without any changes. However, this is not part of the WebExtensions standard, and might not be supported by all compliant browsers.

If you do write your extension to use browser and promises, then we've also developed a polyfill that will enable it to run in Chrome: https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill.

Partially supported APIs

The page Browser support for JavaScript APIs includes compatibility tables for all APIs that have any support in Firefox. Where there are caveats around support for a given API item, this is indicated in these tables with an asterisk "*" and in the reference page for the API item, the caveats are explained.

These tables are generated from compatibility data stored as JSON files in GitHub.

The rest of this section describes compatibility issues that are not already captured in the tables.

notifications

For notifications.create(), with the "basic" type, iconUrl is optional in Firefox. It is required in Chrome.
Notifications are cleared immediately when the user clicks on them. This is not the case in Chrome.
If you call notifications.create() more than once in rapid succession, Firefox may end up not displaying any notification at all. Waiting to make subsequent calls until within the chrome.notifications.create() callback function is not a sufficiently long delay to prevent this from happening.

proxy

This API is completely different to the design of the Chrome API. With Chrome's API an extension can register a PAC file, but can also define explicit proxying rules. Since this is also possible using the extended PAC files, this API only supports the PAC file approach. Because this API is incompatible with the Chrome proxy API, this API is only available through the browser namespace.

tabs

In Firefox, relative URLs passed into tabs.executeScript() or tabs.insertCSS() are resolved relative to the current page URL. In Chrome, these URLs are resolved relative to the extension's base URL. To work cross-browser, you can specify the path as an absolute URL, starting at the extension's root, like this:
```
/path/to/script.js
```
In Firefox, querying tabs by URL with tabs.query() requires "tabs" permission. In Chrome, it's possible without the "tabs" permission but will limit results to tabs whose URLs match host permissions.
In Firefox, the tabs.remove() promise is fulfilled after the beforeunload event while in Chrome the callback does not wait for beforeunload.

webRequest

In Firefox requests can be redirected only if their original URL uses the http: or https: scheme.
In Firefox, events are not fired for system requests (for example, extension upgrades or searchbar suggestions). From Firefox 57 onwards, Firefox makes an exception for extensions that need to intercept webRequest.onAuthRequired for proxy authorization. See the documentation for webRequest.onAuthRequired.
In Firefox, if an extension wants to redirect a public (e.g. HTTPS) URL to an extension page, the extension's manifest.json file must contain a web_accessible_resources key that lists the URL for the extension page. Note that any website may then link or redirect to that url, and extensions should treat any input (POST data, for examples) as if it came from an untrusted source, just as a normal web page should.

windows

In Firefox onFocusChanged will trigger multiple times for a given focus change.

Miscellaneous incompatibilities

URLs in CSS

Firefox resolves URLs in injected CSS files relative to the CSS file itself, rather than to the page it's injected into.

Additional incompatibilities

Firefox does not support using alert(), confirm(), or prompt() from background pages.

web_accessible_resources

In chrome, when a resource is listed in web_accessible_resources, it is accessible as chrome-extension://<your-extension-id>/<path/to/resource>. The extension ID is fixed for a given extension.

Firefox implements it otherwise, using a random UUID that changes for every instance of Firefox: moz-extension://<random-UUID>/<path/to/resource>. This randomness can prevent you from doing a few things, such as add your specific extension's URL to another domain's CSP policy.

Manifest "key" property

When working with an unpacked extension, Chrome allows for a "key" property to be added to the manifest to pin the extension ID across different machines. This is mainly useful when working with web_accessible_resources. Since Firefox uses random UUIDs for web_accessible_resources, this property is unsupported.

Content script requests happen in the context of extension, not content page

In Chrome when request is called (for example, using fetch()) to relative URL like /api from content script, it will be sent to https://example.com/api. In Firefox you have to provide absolute URLs.

manifest.json keys

The main manifest.json page includes a table describing browser support for manifest.json keys. Where there are caveats around support for a given key, this is indicated in the table with an asterisk "*" and in the reference page for the key, the caveats are explained.

These tables are generated from compatibility data stored as JSON files in GitHub.

Native messaging

Command-line arguments

On Linux and Mac, Chrome passes one argument to the native app, which is the origin of the extension that started it, in the form: chrome-extension://[extensionID]. This enables the app to identify the extension.

On Windows, Chrome passes two arguments: the first is the origin of the extension, and the second is a handle to the Chrome native window that started the app.

allowed_extensions

In Chrome, the allowed_extensions key in the app manifest is called allowed_origins instead.

App manifest location

Chrome expects to find the app manifest in a different place. See Native messaging host location in the Chrome docs.