How to determine whether the user has switched to another tab of the current browser

Question

I wish to determine using jquery or javascript that is the user has switched tab standing on the same browser?

I.e. if the user is currently standing on browser say mozilla-firefox tab no.1 , now he has opened another tab say tab no.2 , at that point a popup should appear , with the message "tab changed"

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 21 '11 at 09:40

10

I believe you can use the window.onblur event which will fire when the current page loses focus.

window.onblur = function() {
    // Your action here
};

In jQuery, you write it this way

$(window).blur(function() {
    // Your action here
});

answered Dec 21 '11 at 09:40

Liam Newmarch

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This will also trigger when you focus the inspect side bar which can cause strange behaviour. – anonymous-dev Jun 08 '22 at 21:12
@anonymous-dev this answer is from over a decade ago, and has been closed for more than half of that time. A better solution is to use the Page Visibility API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibility_API – Liam Newmarch Jun 21 '22 at 08:47

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 21 '11 at 09:39

7

Without jQuery

window.onblur = function () {
    // do some stuff after tab was changed e.g.
    alert('You switched the tab');
}

with jQuery:

$('window').blur(function () {
    // do some stuff after tab was changed e.g.
    alert('You switched the tab');
});

Of course displaying alert is not best thing to do, because it focus current tab again :)

answered Dec 21 '11 at 09:39

Mateusz W

1,981
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This will also trigger when you focus the inspect side bar which can cause strange behaviour. – anonymous-dev Jun 08 '22 at 21:12

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 21 '11 at 09:35

4

this might work, but will popup when the user leaves th esite in anyway not just tab changes

window.onunload = popup;

function popup() {
  alert('tab changed');
}

answered Dec 21 '11 at 09:35

Atom Vayalinkal

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How to determine whether the user has switched to another tab of the current browser

3 Answers3