Web/API/Window/close

The Window.close() method closes the current window, or the window on which it was called.

This method can only be called on windows that were opened by a script using the Window.open() method. If the window was not opened by a script, an error similar to this one appears in the console: Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script.

Note also that close() has no effect when called on Window objects returned by HTMLIFrame​Element​.content​Window.

Syntax

window.close();

Examples

Closing a window opened with window.open()

This example shows a method which opens a window and a second one which closes the window; this demonstrates how to use Window.close() to close a window opened by calling window.open().

//Global var to store a reference to the opened window
var openedWindow;

function openWindow() {
  openedWindow = window.open('moreinfo.htm');
}

function closeOpenedWindow() {
  openedWindow.close();
}

Closing the current window

In the past, when you called the window object's close() method directly, rather than calling close() on a window instance, the browser closed the frontmost window, whether your script created that window or not. This is no longer the case; for security reasons, scripts are no longer allowed to close windows they didn't open. (Firefox 46.0.1: scripts can not close windows, they had not opened)

function closeCurrentWindow() {
  window.close();
}

Specification

Specification	Status	Comment
HTML Living StandardThe definition of 'window.close()' in that specification.	Living Standard
HTML5The definition of 'Window.close()' in that specification.	Recommendation

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
close	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1 Notes' Full support 1 Notes' Notes' Starting in Firefox 46.0.1, Window.close() can no longer close windows that weren't opened by the same script. This is a security precaution.	IE Full support 4	Opera Full support 3	Safari Full support 1	WebView Android Full support 1	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 4 Notes' Full support 4 Notes' Notes' Starting in Firefox 46.0.1, Window.close() can no longer close windows that weren't opened by the same script. This is a security precaution.	Opera Android Full support 10.1	Safari iOS Full support 1	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

See implementation notes.'

See implementation notes.

Window.close() by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.