Window.localStorage

The read-only localStorage property allows you to access a Storage object for the Document's origin; the stored data is saved across browser sessions. localStorage is similar to sessionStorage, except that while data stored in localStorage has no expiration time, data stored in sessionStorage gets cleared when the page session ends — that is, when the page is closed.

It should be noted that data stored in either localStorage or sessionStorage is specific to the protocol of the page.

Syntax

myStorage = window.localStorage;

Value

A Storage object which can be used to access the current origin's local storage space.

Exceptions

SecurityError

The request violates a policy decision, or the origin is not a valid scheme/host/port tuple (this can happen if the origin uses the file: or data: scheme, for example). For example, the user may have their browser configured to deny permission to persist data for the specified origin.

Example

The following snippet accesses the current domain's local Storage object and adds a data item to it using Storage.setItem().

localStorage.setItem('myCat', 'Tom');

The syntax for reading the localStorage item is as follows:

var cat = localStorage.getItem("myCat");

The syntax for removing the localStorage item is as follows:

localStorage.removeItem("myCat");

Specifications

Browser compatibility

We're converting our compatibility data into a machine-readable JSON format. This compatibility table still uses the old format, because we haven't yet converted the data it contains. Find out how you can help!

All browsers have varying capacity levels for both localStorage and sessionStorage. Here is a detailed rundown of all the storage capacities for various browsers.

See also

• Using the Web Storage API
• LocalStorage
• SessionStorage
• Window.sessionStorage