Web/API/Window/message event

The message event is fired on a Window object when the window receives a message, for example from a call to Window.postMessage() from another browsing context.

Bubbles	No
Cancelable	No
Interface	MessageEvent
Event handler property	onmessage

Examples

Suppose a script sends a message to a different browsing context, such as another <iframe>, using code like this:

const targetFrame = window.top.frames[1];
const targetOrigin = 'https://example.org';
const windowMessageButton = document.querySelector('#window-message');

windowMessageButton.addEventListener('click', () => {
    targetFrame.postMessage('hello there', targetOrigin);
});

The receiver can listen for the message using addEventListener() with code like this:

window.addEventListener('message', (event) => {
    console.log(`Received message: ${event.data}`);
});

Alternatively the listener could use the onmessage event handler property:

window.onmessage = (event) => {
    console.log(`Received message: ${event.data}`);
};

Specifications

Specification	Status
HTML Living Standard	Living Standard

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
message event	Chrome Full support 60	Edge Full support ≤79	Firefox ?	IE ?	Opera Full support 47	Safari ?	WebView Android Full support 60	Chrome Android Full support 60	Firefox Android ?	Opera Android Full support 47	Safari iOS ?	Samsung Internet Android Full support 8.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

Compatibility unknown  

Compatibility unknown

See also

• Related events: messageerror.
• Window.postMessage().

Window: message event by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.