window close and self close do not close the window in Chrome

Question

The issue is that when I invoke window close   or self close   it doesn t close the window  Now there seems to be a belief that in Chrome you can t close by script any window that is not script created  That is patently false but regardless it is supposed to still do it  even if it requires to pop up an alert to confirm  These are not happening   So does anyone have real  functional and proven method of closing a window using something like javascript window close   or javascript self close   that actually does what is expected and something that happens just fine in every browser that is NOT Chrome based  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and I am looking for Javascript specific solution  nothing JQuery or third party implementation    Update  While much of what has been suggested has serious limitations and usability issues  the latest suggestion  specific to TamperMonkey  using     grant        window close in the script header will often do the trick even on those tabs that normally can t handle the close method  While not entirely ideal and doesn t generalized to every case  it is a good solution in my case

User · Answer

Chrome Fixed the security issues on version 36.0.1985.125

Chrome 36.0.1985.125 WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2014 Release note

From my observation, this update fixed the issue on using window.close() to close the popup window. You will see this in the console when it fail, "Scripts may close only the windows that were opened by it.". That means The hacky workarounds (Brock Adams's answer) may not work in the latest release.

So, in the previous Chrome released builds, the below code block may worked but not with this update.

window.open('', '_self', '');
window.close();

For this update, you have to update your code accordingly to close the popup window. One of the solution is to grab the popup window id and use

chrome.windows.remove(integer windowId, function callback)

method to remove it. Chrome extension windows API can be found at chrome.windows.

Actually my chrome extension MarkView was facing this issue and I had to update my code to make it work for this Chrome Update. By the way, MarkView is tool to read and write Awesome Markdown Files, it provides features including Content Outline, Sortable Tables and code block syntax highlight with line number.

I also created this post, any comments are welcome.

User · Answer

For TamperMonkey     grant window close    Ref  https   www tampermonkey net documentation php  grant

User · Answer

I wanted to share my  solution  with this issue  It seems like most of us are trying to close a browser window in a standard browser session  where a user is visiting some website or another  after they ve visited other websites  and before they ll visit some more   However  my situation is that I am building a web app for a device that will essentially be the only thing the device does  You boot it up  it launches Chrome and navigates to our app  It s not even connected to the internet  any servers it talks to are on our local Docker containers  The user needs a way to close the app  aka close Chrome  so they can access the terminal to perform system updates   So it boots up  launches Chrome in kiosk mode  at the correct address already  This happens to easily satisfy the second option in the spec      A browsing context is script-closable if it is an auxiliary browsing context that was created by a script  as opposed to by an action of the user   or if it is a top-level browsing context whose session history contains only one Document    So simply calling window close   from my kiosk app just works

User · Answer

I found a new way that works for me perfetly  var win   window open  about blank     self    win close

User · Answer

Many people are still trying to find a way to close the Chrome browser using javascript  The following method only works when you use Chrome as APP launcher - kiosk for example   I have tested the following   I m using the following extension  Close Kiosk  I m following the usage instructions and it seems to work just fine  make sure you clear the cache while doing the tests   The javascript I use is  attached to click event    window location href     closekiosk     I hope that helps somebody  as it s the only working solution I have found   Note  It seems the extension runs in background and adds a Chrome tray icon  It has the following option checked   Let Chrome run in background   or similar text   You may need to play with it  until it work for you  I unchecked it and now it works just fine

User · Answer

Only if you open a new window using window open   will the new window be able to close using code as I have mentioned above  This works perfectly for me    Note   Never use href to open the page in a new tab  Window close   does not work with  href    Use window open   instead

User · Answer

If you can t close windows that aren t opened by the script  then you can destroy your page using this code   document getElementsByTagName   html    0   remove

User · Answer

Despite thinking it is  patently false   what you say  seems to be a belief  is actually correct  The Mozilla documentation for window close says     This method is only allowed to be called for windows that were opened by a script using the window open method  If the window was not opened by a script  the following error appears in the JavaScript Console  Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script   You say that it is  supposed to still do it  but I don t think you ll find any reference which supports that  maybe you ve misremembered something

User · Answer

Ordinary javascript cannot close windows willy-nilly   This is a security feature  introduced a while ago  to stop various malicious exploits and annoyances   From the latest working spec for window close        The close   method on Window objects should  if all the following conditions are met  close the browsing context A          The corresponding browsing context A is script-closable    The browsing context of the incumbent script is familiar with the browsing context A    The browsing context of the incumbent script is allowed to navigate the browsing context A          A browsing context is script-closable if it is an auxiliary browsing context that was created by a script  as opposed to by an action of the user   or if it is a browsing context whose session history contains only one Document    This means  with one small exception  javascript must not be allowed to close a window that was not opened by that same javascript   Chrome allows that exception -- which it doesn t apply to userscripts -- however Firefox does not   The Firefox implementation flat out states       This method is only allowed to be called for windows that were opened by a script using the window open method      If you try to use window close from a Greasemonkey   Tampermonkey   userscript you will get  Firefox  The error message   Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script   Chrome  just silently fails       The long-term solution   The best way to deal with this is to make a Chrome extension and or Firefox add-on instead   These can reliably close the current window   However  since the security risks  posed by window close  are much less for a Greasemonkey Tampermonkey script  Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey could reasonably provide this functionality in their API  essentially packaging the extension work for you   Consider making a feature request       The hacky workarounds   Chrome is currently was vulnerable to the  self redirection  exploit   So code like this used to work in general   open location    self   close      This is buggy behavior  IMO  and is now  as of roughly April 2015  mostly blocked    It will still work from injected code only if the tab is freshly opened and has no pages in the browsing history   So it s only useful in a very small set of circumstances   However  a variation still works on Chrome  v43  amp  v44  plus Tampermonkey  v3 11 or later    Use an explicit  grant and plain window close    EG        UserScript       name        window close demo     include     http   YOUR SERVER COM YOUR PATH       grant       GM addStyle       UserScript    setTimeout  window close  5000     Thanks to zanetu for the update   Note that this will not work if there is only one tab open  It only closes additional tabs    Firefox is secure against that exploit   So  the only javascript way is to cripple the security settings  one browser at a time   You can open up about config and set allow scripts to close windows to true     If your script is for personal use  go ahead and do that   If you ask anyone else to turn that setting on  they would be smart  and justified  to decline with prejudice     There currently is no equivalent setting for Chrome

User · Answer

This might be old  but let s answer it    I use top close   to close a tab  window close   or other open   close didn t work for me

User · Answer

In my case  the page needed to close  but may have been opened by a link and thus window close would fail   The solution I chose is to issue the window close  followed by a window setTimeout that redirects to a different page   That way  if window close succeeds  execution on that page stops  but if it fails  in a second  it will redirect to a different page   window close    window setTimeout function   location href     some-page php    1000

User · Answer

You can also try to use my code below  This will also help you to redirect your parent window   Parent    lt script language  javascript  gt   function open a window          var w   200          var h   200          var left   Number  screen width 2 - w 2            var tops   Number  screen height 2 - h 2             window open  window to close html        toolbar no  location no  directories no  status no  menubar no  scrollbars no  resizable no  copyhistory no  width   w    height   h    top   tops    left   left       return false        opener  window onmessage   function  e      if  e data      location         window location replace  https   www google com             lt  script gt    lt input type  button  onclick  return open a window     value  Open New Window Tab    gt    Popup    lt  DOCTYPE html gt   lt html gt   lt body onload  quitBox  quit     gt    lt h1 gt The window closer  lt  h1 gt    lt input type  button  onclick  return quitBox  quit     value  Close This Window Tab    gt      lt script language  javascript  gt   function quitBox cmd               if  cmd   quit                       window opener postMessage  location                window open location    self   close                       return false         lt  script gt    lt  body gt   lt  html gt

User · Answer

Try something like this onclick  return self close

User · Answer

The below code worked for me -  window open  location     self        window close      Tested on Chrome 43 0 2357 81

User · Answer

I am using the method posted by Brock Adams and it even works in Firefox  if it s user initiated   open location    self   close      I am calling it from a button press so it is user initiated  and it is still working fine using Chrome 35-40  Internet Explorer 11  Safari 7-8 and ALSO Firefox 29-35  I tested using version 8 1 of Windows and Mac OS X 10 6  10 9  amp  10 10 if that is different      Self-Closing Window Code  on the page that closes itself   The complete code to be used on the user-opened window that can close itself   window to close htm  JavaScript   function quitBox cmd           if  cmd   quit                 open location    self   close                 return false         HTML    lt input type  button  name  Quit  id  Quit  value  Quit  onclick  return quitBox  quit       gt    Try this test page   Now tested in Chrome 40 and Firefox 35    http   browserstrangeness bitbucket io window close tester htm     Window Opener Code  on a page that opens the above page   To make this work  security-imposed cross browser compatibility requires that the window that is to be closed must have already been opened by the user clicking a button within the same site domain   For example  the window that uses the method above to close itself  can be opened from a page using this code  code provided from my example page linked above    window close tester htm  JavaScript   function open a window          window open  window to close htm          return false      HTML    lt input type  button  onclick  return open a window     value  Open New Window Tab    gt

User · Answer

In tampermonkey now you can use      grant        window close   And then just simply call  window close

[javascript] window.close and self.close do not close the window in Chrome

Chrome Fixed the security issues on version 36.0.1985.125

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