Window: close() method
Baseline
Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The Window.close() method closes the current window, or
the window on which it was called.
Windows are script-closable if they were created by web content. This generally includes:
- Windows opened using
Window.open() - Windows opened via web content, such as links (
<a target="_blank">) or forms (<form target="_blank">), without user modifier actions
Windows opened by browser UI actions — such as right-click → Open in new tab, Ctrl+Click, Shift+Click, or middle-click — are often not script-closable. They may only be closed if they have not been navigated (history length remains 1). Calling close() otherwise typically shows a console warning: 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
close()
Parameters
None.
Return value
None (undefined).
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 variable to store a reference to the opened window
let openedWindow;
function openWindow() {
openedWindow = window.open("more-info.htm");
}
function closeOpenedWindow() {
openedWindow.close();
}
Specifications
| Specification |
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| HTML # dom-window-close-dev |
Browser compatibility
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Legend
Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.
- Full support
- Full support
- Partial support
- Partial support
- See implementation notes.