JavaScript: close a window

Closing a window

Question: How do I close a window?

Answer: To close a window that you previously opened from your script, you can use the window.close() method, for example:

winRef.close();

where winRef is the window reference, as returned by the window.open() method. The gotcha here is that the window referenced by winRef does not necessarily exist at the time when your script attempts to close it. (The user might well have closed it already!) And if the window no longer exists, your script may cause errors. Possible workarounds are the following:

Re-open the window with the same winRef and name.
Place the window-closing code only in the window to be closed. In this case the window reference will be self, and the code will be self.close().
Test whether the window is still open before attempting to close it.

If your script tries to execute window.close() for the main browser window that was opened by the user, most browsers will first invoke a dialog to ask the user whether to let the script close the browser window. Test this yourself: here is a script that attempts to close your browser window.