BroadcastChannel: message event

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 message event of the BroadcastChannel interface fires when a message arrives on that channel.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

js
addEventListener("message", (event) => { })
onmessage = (event) => { }

Event type

Event properties

In addition to the properties listed below, properties from the parent interface, Event, are available.

data Read only

The data sent by the message emitter.

origin Read only

A string representing the origin of the message emitter.

lastEventId Read only

A string representing a unique ID for the event.

source Read only

A message event source, which is either a WindowProxy, a MessagePort, or a ServiceWorker object representing the message emitter.

ports Read only

An array of MessagePort objects representing the ports associated with the channel the message is being sent through (where appropriate, e.g. in channel messaging or when sending a message to a shared worker).

Examples

In this example there's a "sender" <iframe> that broadcasts the contents of a <textarea> when the user clicks a button. There are two "receiver" iframes that listen to the broadcast message and write the result into a <div> element.

Sender

js
const channel = new BroadcastChannel("example-channel");
const messageControl = document.querySelector("#message");
const broadcastMessageButton = document.querySelector("#broadcast-message");

broadcastMessageButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
  channel.postMessage(messageControl.value);
});

Receiver 1

js
const channel = new BroadcastChannel("example-channel");
channel.addEventListener("message", (event) => {
  received.textContent = event.data;
});

Receiver 2

js
const channel = new BroadcastChannel("example-channel");
channel.addEventListener("message", (event) => {
  received.textContent = event.data;
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# event-message
HTML
# handler-broadcastchannel-onmessage

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobileserver
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
Deno
Node.js
message event

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support
No support
No support
User must explicitly enable this feature.

See also