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(); }
Specification
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
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
close | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox
Full support
1
| IE Full support 4 | Opera Full support 3 | Safari Full support 1 | WebView Android Full support 1 | Chrome Android Full support 18 | Firefox Android
Full support
4
| Opera Android Full support 10.1 | Safari iOS Full support 1 | Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- See implementation notes.
- See implementation notes.