Chrome incompatibilities

Extensions built with WebExtension APIs are designed to be compatible with Chrome and Opera extensions: as far as possible, extensions written for those browsers should run on Firefox with minimal changes.

However, Firefox currently has support for only a limited set of the features and APIs supported by Chrome and Opera. We're working on adding more support, but many features are not yet supported, and we may never support some.

This article lists all features and APIs that are fully or partially supported in Firefox Developer Edition. Where a feature is partially supported, we've indicated what the gaps are.

JavaScript APIs

Callbacks and the chrome.* namespace

In Chrome, extensions access privileged JavaScript APIs using the chrome namespace:

chrome.browserAction.setIcon({path: "path/to/icon.png"});

Firefox extensions access the equivalent APIs using the browser namespace:

browser.browserAction.setIcon({path: "path/to/icon.png"});

Many of the APIs are asynchronous. In Chrome, asynchronous APIs use callbacks to return values, and runtime.lastError to communicate errors:

function logCookie(c) {
  if (chrome.extension.lastError) {
    console.error(chrome.extension.lastError);
  } else {
    console.log(c);
  }
}
chrome.cookies.set(
  {url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/"},
  logCookie
);

The equivalent WebExtensions APIs use promises instead:

function logCookie(c) {
  console.log(c);
}
function logError(e) {
  console.error(e);
}
var setCookie = browser.cookies.set(
  {url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/"}
);
setCookie.then(logCookie, logError);

As a porting aid, the Firefox implementation of WebExtensions supports chrome and callbacks as well as browser and promises. This means that many Chrome extensions will just work in Firefox without any changes. However, this is not part of the WebExtensions standard, and might not be supported by all compliant browsers.

If you do write your extension to use browser and promises, then we've also developed a polyfill that will enable it to run in Chrome: https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill.

Partially supported APIs

The page Browser support for JavaScript APIs includes compatibility tables for all APIs that have any support in Firefox. Where there are caveats around support for a given API item, this is indicated in these tables with an asterisk "*" and in the reference page for the API item, the caveats are explained.

These tables are generated from compatibility data stored as JSON files in GitHub.

The rest of this section describes compatibility issues that are not already captured in the tables.

notifications

• For notifications.create(), with the "basic" type, iconUrl is optional in Firefox. It is required in Chrome.
• Notifications are cleared immediately when the user clicks on them. This is not the case in Chrome.
• If you call notifications.create() more than once in rapid succession, Firefox may end up not displaying any notification at all. Waiting to make subsequent calls until within the chrome.notifications.create() callback function is not a sufficiently long delay to prevent this from happening.

tabs

• In Firefox, relative URLs passed into tabs.executeScript() or tabs.insertCSS() are resolved relative to the current page URL. In Chrome, these URLs are resolved relative to the extension's base URL. To work cross-browser, you can specify the path as an absolute URL, starting at the extension's root, like this:

  /path/to/script.js

• In Firefox, querying tabs by URL with tabs.query() requires "tabs" permission. In Chrome, it's possible without the "tabs" permission but will limit results to tabs whose URLs match host permissions.
• In Firefox, the tabs.remove() promise is fulfilled after the beforeunload event while in Chrome the callback does not wait for beforeunload.

webRequest

• In Firefox requests can be redirected only if their original URL uses the http: or https: scheme.

windows

• In Firefox onFocusChanged will trigger multiple times for a given focus change.

Planned APIs

We don't fully support the following APIs, but plan to do so, soon:

• Devtools (mostly panels)
• debugger
• permissions

This doesn't mean that these are the only additional APIs we will support, but that they are our current priorities.

Miscellaneous incompatibilities

URLs in CSS

Firefox resolves URLs in injected CSS files relative to the CSS file itself, rather than to the page it's injected into.

Additional incompatibilities

Firefox does not support using alert(), confirm(), or prompt() from background pages.

web_accessible_resources

In chrome, when a resource is listed in web_accessible_resources, it is accessible as chrome-extension://<your-extension-id>/<path/to/resource>.  The extension ID is fixed for a given extension.

Firefox implements it otherwise, using a random UUID that changes for every instance of Firefox: moz-extension://<random-UUID>/<path/to/resource>. This randomness can prevent you from doing a few things, such as add your specific extension's URL to another domain's CSP policy.

Manifest "key" property

When working with an unpacked extension, Chrome allows for a "key" property to be added to the manifest to pin the extension ID across different machines. This is mainly useful when working with web_accessible_resources. Since Firefox uses random UUIDs for web_accessible_resources, this property is unsupported.

manifest.json features

Fully supported keys

• applications
• browser_action
• default_locale
• description
• icons
• manifest_version
• name
• page_action
• version
• web_accessible_resources

Partially supported keys

background

Firefox does not support the "persistent" property. Background scripts stay loaded all the time.

chrome_settings_overrides

In Firefox, only "homepage" is supported.

chrome_url_overrides

If two or more extensions both define a custom new tab page, then in Firefox the first extension to run wins. In Chrome, the last extension wins.

commands

Firefox does not support:

• global
• any of the media keys: "MediaNextTrack", "MediaPlayPause", "MediaPrevTrack", "MediaStop"

content_scripts

In Firefox, content scripts declared in the manifest will be injected into existing tabs on each extension load. In Chrome, content scripts do not apply to tabs already open when the extension is loaded.

content_security_policy

Firefox does not support:

• "http://127.0.0.1" or "http://localhost" as script sources: they must be served over HTTPS.

options_ui

Firefox does not support:

• chrome_style

permissions

Firefox does not support the following permissions:

• background
• geolocation
• unlimitedStorage

Obviously, it doesn't support permissions for APIs that are themselves not supported.

protocol_handlers

This key is not supported in Chrome.

incognito

Firefox does not support the following incognito (private browsing) modes:

• split

Native messaging

Command-line arguments

On Linux and Mac, Chrome passes one argument to the native app, which is the origin of the extension that started it, in the form: chrome-extension://[extensionID]. This enables the app to identify the extension.

On Windows, Chrome passes two arguments: the first is the origin of the extension, and the second is a handle to the Chrome native window that started the app.

allowed_extensions

In Chrome, the allowed_extensions key in the app manifest is called allowed_origins instead.

App manifest location

Chrome expects to find the app manifest in a different place. See Native messaging host location in the Chrome docs.