action

Adds a button to the browser's toolbar.

Note: This API is available in Manifest V3 or higher.

A browser action is a button in the browser's toolbar.

You can associate a popup with the button. The popup is specified using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, just like a normal web page. JavaScript running in the popup gets access to all the same WebExtension APIs as your background scripts, but its global context is the popup, not the current page displayed in the browser. To affect web pages you need to communicate with them via messages.

If you specify a popup, it will be shown — and the content will be loaded — when the user clicks the icon. If you do not specify a popup, then when the user clicks the icon an event is dispatched to your extension.

You can define most of a browser action's properties declaratively using the browser_action key in the manifest.json.

With the action API, you can:

use action.onClicked to listen for clicks on the icon.
get and set the icon's properties — icon, title, popup, and so on. You can get and set these globally across all tabs, or for a specific tab by passing the tab ID as an additional argument.

Types

action.ColorArray: An array of four integers in the range 0-255 defining an RGBA color.
action.ImageDataType: Pixel data for an image. Must be an ImageData object (for example, from a <canvas> element).

Functions

action.setTitle(): Sets the browser action's title. This will be displayed in a tooltip.
action.getTitle(): Gets the browser action's title.
action.setIcon(): Sets the browser action's icon.
action.setPopup(): Sets the HTML document to be opened as a popup when the user clicks on the browser action's icon.
action.getPopup(): Gets the HTML document set as the browser action's popup.
action.openPopup(): Open the browser action's popup.
action.setBadgeText(): Sets the browser action's badge text. The badge is displayed on top of the icon.
action.getBadgeText(): Gets the browser action's badge text.
action.setBadgeBackgroundColor(): Sets the badge's background color.
action.getBadgeBackgroundColor(): Gets the badge's background color.
action.setBadgeTextColor(): Sets the badge's text color.
action.getBadgeTextColor(): Gets the badge's text color.
action.enable(): Enables the browser action for a tab. By default, browser actions are enabled for all tabs.
action.disable(): Disables the browser action for a tab, meaning that it cannot be clicked when that tab is active.
action.isEnabled(): Checks whether the browser action is enabled or not.

Events

action.onClicked: Fired when a browser action icon is clicked. This event will not fire if the browser action has a popup.

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

Note: This API is based on Chromium's chrome.action API. This documentation is derived from browser_action.json in the Chromium code.