Add-ons

runtime.sendMessage()

Sends a single message to event listeners within your extension or a different extension.

If sending to your extension, omit the extensionId argument. The runtime.onMessage event will be fired in each page in your extension, except for the frame that called runtime.sendMessage.

If sending to a different extension, include the extensionId argument set to the other extension's ID. runtime.onMessageExternal will be fired in the other extension.

Extensions cannot send messages to content scripts using this method. To send messages to content scripts, use tabs.sendMessage.

This is an asynchronous function that returns a Promise.

Syntax

var sending = browser.runtime.sendMessage(
  extensionId,             // optional string
  message,                 // any
  options                  // optional object
)

Parameters

extensionIdOptional
string. The ID of the extension to send the message to. Include this to send the message to a different extension. If the intended recipient has set an ID explicitly using the applications key in manifest.json, then extensionId should have this value. Otherwise it should be have the ID that was generated for the intended recipient.
If extensionId is omitted, the message will be sent to your own extension.
message
any. An object that can be serialized to JSON.
optionsOptional
object.
includeTlsChannelIdOptional
boolean. Whether the TLS channel ID will be passed into runtime.onMessageExternal for processes that are listening for the connection event.
toProxyScriptOptional
boolean. Must be True if the message is intended for a PAC file loaded using the proxy API.

Depending on the arguments it is given, this API is sometimes ambiguous. The following rules are used:

  • if one argument is given, it is the message to send, and the message will be sent internally.
  • if two arguments are given:
    • the arguments are interpreted as (message, options), and the message is sent internally, if the second argument is any of the following:
      1. a valid options object (meaning, it is an object which contains only the properties of options that the browser supports)
      2. null
      3. undefined
    • otherwise, the arguments are interpreted as (extensionId, message). The message will be sent to the extension identified by extensionId.
  • if three arguments are given, the arguments are interpreted as (extensionId, message, options). The message will be sent to the extension identified by extensionId.

Note that before Firefox 55, the rules were different in the 2-argument case. Under the old rules, if the first argument was a string, it was treated as the extensionId, with the message as the second argument. This meant that if you called sendMessage() with arguments like ("my-message", {}), then it would send an empty message to the extension identified by "my-message". Under the new rules, with these arguments you would send the message "my-message" internally, with an empty options object.

Return value

A Promise. If the receiver sent a response, this will be fulfilled with the response as a JSON object. Otherwise it will be fulfilled with no arguments. If an error occurs while connecting to the extension, the promise will be rejected with an error message.

Browser compatibility

ChromeEdgeFirefoxFirefox for AndroidOpera
Basic support26Yes 1454815
options.includeTlsChannelId32No454819
options.toProxyScriptNoNo5555No
1. `runtime.onMessage` listeners in extension views receive the messages they sent.

Examples

Here's a content script that sends a message to the background script when the user clicks the content window. The message payload is {greeting: "Greeting from the content script"}, and the sender also expects to get a response, which is handled in the handleResponse function:

// content-script.js
function handleResponse(message) {
  console.log(`Message from the background script:  ${message.response}`);
}
function handleError(error) {
  console.log(`Error: ${error}`);
}
function notifyBackgroundPage(e) {
  var sending = browser.runtime.sendMessage({
    greeting: "Greeting from the content script"
  });
  sending.then(handleResponse, handleError);  
}
window.addEventListener("click", notifyBackgroundPage);

The corresponding background script looks like this:

// background-script.js
function handleMessage(request, sender, sendResponse) {
  console.log("Message from the content script: " +
    request.greeting);
  sendResponse({response: "Response from background script"});
}
browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener(handleMessage);

Example extensions

Acknowledgements

This API is based on Chromium's chrome.runtime API. This documentation is derived from runtime.json in the Chromium code.

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

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 Contributors to this page: jonathanKingston, andrewtruongmoz, wbamberg, Rob W, jsnjack, Makyen, chrisdavidmills
 Last updated by: jonathanKingston,