contextmenus

Add-ons using the techniques described in this document are considered a legacy technology in Firefox. Don't use these techniques to develop new add-ons. Use WebExtensions instead. If you maintain an add-on which uses the techniques described here, consider migrating it to use WebExtensions.

Starting from Firefox 53, no new legacy add-ons will be accepted on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) for desktop Firefox and Firefox for Android.

Starting from Firefox 57, WebExtensions will be the only supported extension type. Desktop Firefox and Firefox for Android will not load other extension types.

Even before Firefox 57, changes coming up in the Firefox platform will break many legacy extensions. These changes include multiprocess Firefox (e10s), sandboxing, and multiple content processes. Legacy extensions that are affected by these changes should migrate to WebExtensions if they can. See the "Compatibility Milestones" document for more information.

A wiki page containing resources, migration paths, office hours, and more, is available to help developers transition to the new technologies.

The NativeWindow object is only available to privileged code running on Firefox for Android, and is intended for use by Firefox for Android add-ons.

Summary

Returns a reference to the NativeWindow.contextmenus object, which can be used to add items to the Firefox for Android context menu, and subsequently remove them. You can add a menu item to the context menu using NativeWindow.contextmenus.add() and remove it using NativeWindow.contextmenus.remove().

To add a context menu item, you need to supply:

  • name : the name of the item that is displayed to the user
  • selector : determines when the item should be shown. You can use one of a number of predefined selectors, or define your own.
  • callback : a function that is called when the item is selected

NativeWindow.contextmenus.add() returns a menuID which you can subsequently pass into NativeWindow.contextmenus.remove() to remove the item.

A common pattern is for a restartless add-on to add and remove menu items in the add-on's bootstrap.js:

This ensures that the item is always present while the add-on is installed and enabled, and that it is cleaned up properly when the add-on is uninstalled or disabled. But note that bootstrap.js is not attached to a DOM window, so you need to get a window, for example using nsIWindowMediator, before you can use this pattern.

ExampleNativeWindow-contextmenus.png

The following example adds a context menu item which is displayed when any element is selected. When the user selects the context menu item, it displays the HTML source for the element in a toast notification:

var menuID;
function loadIntoWindow(window) {    
  if (!window)    
    return;
  let label = "Show HTML";
  let selector =  window.NativeWindow.contextmenus.SelectorContext("*");
  menuID = window.NativeWindow.contextmenus.add(label, selector, function(target) {      
    window.NativeWindow.toast.show(target.outerHTML, "short");       
  });    
}    
   
function unloadFromWindow(window) {    
  if (!window)    
    return;    
  window.NativeWindow.contextmenus.remove(menuID);      
}

Methods

add
Add a context menu item.
remove
Remove a context menu item.

See also

Document Tags and Contributors

 Contributors to this page: rebloor, andrewtruongmoz, wbamberg, kscarfone, Canuckistani
 Last updated by: rebloor,