Window.close()

The Window.close() method closes the current window, or the window on which it was called.

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, an error similar to this one appears in the console: Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script.

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
WHATWG 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

Feature Chrome Edge Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) [1] (Yes) (Yes) (Yes)
Feature Android Chrome for Android Edge Firefox Mobile (Gecko) Firefox OS IE Mobile Opera Mobile iOS WebKit
(Safari/Chrome/Firefox/etc)
Basic support (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) [1] (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) (Yes)

[1] Starting in Firefox 46.0.1, Window.close() can no longer close windows that weren't opened by the same script. This is a security precaution.

See also

MSDN: window.close Method

Document Tags and Contributors

 Last updated by: momdo,