Add-ons

tabs.create()

Creates a new tab.

This is an asynchronous function that returns a Promise.

Syntax

var creating = browser.tabs.create(
  createProperties   // object
)

Parameters

createProperties
object. Properties to give the new tab. To learn more about these properties, see the tabs.Tab documentation.
activeOptional
boolean. Whether the tab should become the active tab in the window. Does not affect whether the window is focused (see windows.update). Defaults to true.
cookieStoreId Optional
string. Use this to create a tab whose cookie store ID is cookieStoreId. This option is only available if the extension has the "cookies" permission.
indexOptional
integer. The position the tab should take in the window. The provided value will be clamped to between zero and the number of tabs in the window.
openerTabIdOptional
integer. The ID of the tab that opened this tab. If specified, the opener tab must be in the same window as the newly created tab.
pinnedOptional
boolean. Whether the tab should be pinned. Defaults to false.
selectedOptional
boolean. Whether the tab should become the selected tab in the window. Defaults to true.
This property is deprecated, and is not supported in Firefox. Use active instead.
urlOptional
string. The URL to navigate the tab to initially. Defaults to the New Tab Page.
Fully-qualified URLs must include a scheme (i.e. 'http://www.google.com', not 'www.google.com').
For security reasons, in Firefox, this may not be a privileged URL. So passing any of the following URLs will fail:
  • chrome: URLs
  • javascript: URLs
  • data: URLs
  • file: URLs (i.e., files on the filesystem. However, to use a file packaged inside the extension, see below)
  • privileged about: URLs (for example, about:config, about:addons, about:debugging) . Non-privileged URLs (e.g., about:blank) are allowed.

To load a page that's packaged with your extension, specify an absolute URL starting at the extension's manifest.json file. For example: '/path/to/my-page.html'. If you omit the leading '/', the URL is treated as a relative URL, and different browsers may construct different absolute URLs.

windowIdOptional
integer. The window to create the new tab in. Defaults to the current window.

Return value

A Promise that will be fulfilled with a tabs.Tab object containing details about the created tab. If the tab could not be created (for example, because url used a privileged scheme) the promise will be rejected with an error message.

Browser compatibility

ChromeEdgeFirefoxFirefox for AndroidOpera
Basic supportYesYes 14554Yes
pinnedYesNo45NoYes
cookieStoreIdNoNo52NoNo
selectedYesNoNoNoYes
openerTabId18NoNoNo15
1. If the `url` has the `ms-browser-extension://` protocol it is mistakenly considered a relative URL and the prefix is added redundantly, causing tab to fail loading.

Examples

Open "https://example.org" in a new tab:

function onCreated(tab) {
  console.log(`Created new tab: ${tab.id}`)
}
function onError(error) {
  console.log(`Error: ${error}`);
}
browser.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function() {
  var creating = browser.tabs.create({
    url:"https://example.org"
  });
  creating.then(onCreated, onError);
});

Example extensions

Acknowledgements

This API is based on Chromium's chrome.tabs API. This documentation is derived from tabs.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: andrewtruongmoz, ericjung, wbamberg, Makyen, Jeremie, kmaglione
 Last updated by: andrewtruongmoz,