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history

Use the history API to interact with the browser history.

If you are looking for information about the browser session history, see the History interface.

Note: Downloads are treated as HistoryItem objects. Therefore, events such as history.onVisited fire for downloads.

Browser history is a chronological record of pages the user has visited. The history API enables you to:

However, the user may have visited a single page multiple times, so the API also has the concept of "visits". So you can also use this API to:

To use this API, an extension must request the "history" permission in its manifest.json file.

Types

history.TransitionType
Describes how the browser navigated to a particular page.
history.HistoryItem

Provides information about a particular page in the browser history.

history.VisitItem

Describes a single visit to a page.

Functions

history.search()
Searches the browser history for history.HistoryItem objects matching the given criteria.
history.getVisits()
Retrieves information about visits to a given page.
history.addUrl()
Adds a record to the browser history of a visit to the given page.
history.deleteUrl()
Removes all visits to the given URL from the browser history.
history.deleteRange()
Removes all visits to pages that the user made during the given time range.
history.deleteAll()
Removes all visits from the browser history.

Events

history.onTitleChanged
Fired when the title of a page visited by the user is recorded.
history.onVisited
Fired each time the user visits a page, providing the history.HistoryItem data for that page.
history.onVisitRemoved

Fired when a URL is removed completely from the browser history.

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
HistoryItem
Yes
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Yes
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No
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TransitionType
Yes
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Yes
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No
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VisitItem
Yes
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Yes
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No
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addUrl
Yes
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Yes
No
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No
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deleteAll
Yes
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Yes
No
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No
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deleteRange
Yes
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Yes
No
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No
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deleteUrl
Yes
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Yes
No
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No
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getVisits
Yes
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Yes
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No
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onTitleChanged
No
No
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No
No
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No
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onVisitRemoved
Yes
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Yes
No
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No
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onVisited
Yes
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Before version 56, the result object's 'title' was always an empty string. From version 56 onwards, it is set to the last known title, if that is available, or an empty string otherwise.
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Yes
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No
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search
Yes
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Yes
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No
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Example extensions

Note: This API is based on Chromium's chrome.history API. This documentation is derived from history.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.

© 2005–2021 MDN contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/history