Window.close()
The Window.close()
method closes the current window, or
the window on which it was called.
This method can only be called on windows that were opened by a script using the
Window.open()
method. If the window was not opened by a script, an error
similar to this one appears in the console:
Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script.
Note also that close()
has no effect when called on Window
objects returned by
HTMLIFrameElement.contentWindow
.
Syntax
window.close();
Examples
Closing a window opened with
window.open()
This example shows a method which opens a window and a second one which closes the
window; this demonstrates how to use Window.close()
to close a window
opened by calling window.open()
.
//Global var to store a reference to the opened window
var openedWindow;
function openWindow() {
openedWindow = window.open('moreinfo.htm');
}
function closeOpenedWindow() {
openedWindow.close();
}
Closing the current window
In the past, when you called the window
object's close()
method directly, rather than calling close()
on a window
instance, the browser closed the frontmost window, whether your script
created that window or not. This is no longer the case; for security reasons, scripts
are no longer allowed to close windows they didn't open. (Firefox 46.0.1: scripts can
not close windows, they had not opened)
function closeCurrentWindow() {
window.close();
}
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
HTML Living Standard The definition of 'window.close()' in that specification. |
Living Standard | |
HTML5 The definition of 'Window.close()' in that specification. |
Recommendation |
Browser compatibility
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