browsingData.settings()

Browsers have a built-in "Clear History" feature, which enables the user to clear various types of browsing data. This has a UI that enables the user to select what type of data to remove (e.g. history, downloads, ...) and how far back in time to remove data.

This function returns the current value of these settings.

Note that not all data types will always be removable through the UI, and some UI options may map to more than one data type.

This is an asynchronous function that returns a Promise.

Syntax

var getSettings = browser.browsingData.settings()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A Promise that will be fulfilled with an object containing the settings information. This object has three properties:

options
browsingData.RemovalOptions. A RemovalOptions object describing the removal options currently selected.
dataToRemove
browsingData.DataTypeSet. This will contain a property for every data type that can be toggled in the browser's UI. Each property will have a value of true if that type is selected for removal and false otherwise.
dataRemovalPermitted
browsingData.DataTypeSet. This will contain a property for every data type that can be toggled in the browser's UI. Each will have a value of true if the administrator of the device has allowed the user to remove that type, and false otherwise.

If any error occurs, the promise will be rejected with an error message.

Browser compatibility

ChromeEdgeFirefoxFirefox for AndroidOpera
Basic supportYesNo53NoYes

Examples

Log current settings:

function onGotSettings(settings) {
  console.log(settings.options);
  console.log(settings.dataToRemove);
  console.log(settings.dataRemovalPermitted);
}
function onError(error) {
  console.error(error);
}
browser.browsingData.settings().then(onGotSettings, onError);

Acknowledgements

This API is based on Chromium's chrome.browsingData API.

Microsoft Edge compatibility data is supplied by Microsoft Corporation and is included here under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Document Tags and Contributors

 Contributors to this page: wbamberg
 Last updated by: wbamberg,