Window: frameElement property

The Window.frameElement property returns the element (such as <iframe> or <object>) in which the window is embedded.

Note: Despite this property's name, it works for documents embedded within any embedding point, including <object>, <iframe>, or <embed>.

Value

The element which the window is embedded into. If the window isn't embedded into another document, or if the document into which it's embedded has a different origin, the value is null instead.

Examples

js
const frameEl = window.frameElement;
// If we're embedded, change the containing element's URL to 'https://mozilla.org/'
if (frameEl) {
  frameEl.src = "https://mozilla.org/";
}

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-frameelement-dev

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also

  • window.frames returns an array-like object, listing the direct sub-frames of the current window.
  • window.parent returns the parent window, which is the window containing the frameElement of the child window.