sessions.Session

The Session object represents a tab or window that the user has closed in the current browsing session.

Sessions are represented as Tab objects if the tab was closed but its window was not closed: for example, because the user clicked the "Close tab" button, and this tab was not the only tab in its window.

Sessions are represented as Window objects if the window was closed: for example, because the user clicked the "Close window" button, or closed the only tab open in a window.

Note that different browsers might have a different idea of when a session is a Tab and when it is a Window. For example:

  • In Chrome a session is recorded as a Window if the user closes a window that contained more than one tab. If the user closed a window that contained only one tab, this is recorded as a Tab.
  • In Firefox, a session is recorded as a Window if the user closes a window (or a tab that was the last tab in the window), and a Tab if the user closes a tab that wasn't the last tab in its window.

The Tab object for a tab that is open will not have a sessionId. When the tab is closed, it will have a sessionId but will not have a tab id. If the tab is restored, it will get a new tab id and will lose the sessionId.

Type

Values of this type are objects. They contain the following properties:

lastModified

number. The time the tab or window was closed, in milliseconds since the epoch.

tab Optional

object. If the object represents a closed tab, then this property is present and will be a tabs.Tab object. This will contain url, title, and favIconUrl only if the extension has the "tabs" permission or host permissions to access the tab's URL.

window Optional

object. If the object represents a closed window, then this property is present and will be a windows.Window object.

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Firefox for Android
Safari on iOS
Session
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 37 (Release date: 2014-08-26)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 79 (Release date: 2020-01-15)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 52 (Release date: 2017-03-07)
footnote
footnote 'Tab' objects in Sessions don't contain the 'url', 'title', or 'favIconUrl' properties.
Opera – Full support
Opera 24 (Release date: 2014-09-02)
footnote Full support
Safari – No support
Safari
footnote No support
Firefox for Android – No support
Firefox for Android
footnote No support
Safari on iOS – No support
Safari on iOS
footnote No support

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support
No support
No support
See implementation notes.

Note: This API is based on Chromium's chrome.sessions API.