window.close and self.close do not close the window in Chrome

Question

The issue is that when I invoke window.close() or self.close() it doesn\'t close the window. Now there seems to be a belief that in Chrome you can\

Answer 1

I am using the method posted by Brock Adams and it even works in Firefox, if it's user initiated.

open(location, '_self').close();

I am calling it from a button press so it is user initiated, and it is still working fine using Chrome 35-40, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 7-8 and ALSO Firefox 29-35. I tested using version 8.1 of Windows and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.9 & 10.10 if that is different.

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Self-Closing Window Code (on the page that closes itself)

The complete code to be used on the user-opened window that can close itself:

window_to_close.htm

JavaScript:

function quitBox(cmd)
{   
    if (cmd=='quit')
    {
        open(location, '_self').close();
    }   
    return false;   
}

HTML:

<input type="button" name="Quit" id="Quit" value="Quit" onclick="return quitBox('quit');" />

Try this test page: (Now tested in Chrome 40 and Firefox 35)

http://browserstrangeness.bitbucket.io/window_close_tester.htm

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Window Opener Code (on a page that opens the above page)

To make this work, security-imposed cross browser compatibility requires that the window that is to be closed must have already been opened by the user clicking a button within the same site domain.

For example, the window that uses the method above to close itself, can be opened from a page using this code (code provided from my example page linked above):

window_close_tester.htm

JavaScript:

function open_a_window() 
{
    window.open("window_to_close.htm"); 

    return false;
}

HTML:

<input type="button" onclick="return open_a_window();" value="Open New Window/Tab" />

Answer 2

For TamperMonkey:

@grant window.close 

Ref: https://www.tampermonkey.net/documentation.php#_grant

Answer 3

In my case, the page needed to close, but may have been opened by a link and thus window.close would fail.

The solution I chose is to issue the window.close, followed by a window.setTimeout that redirects to a different page.

That way, if window.close succeeds, execution on that page stops, but if it fails, in a second, it will redirect to a different page.

window.close();
window.setTimeout(function(){location.href = '/some-page.php';},1000);

Answer 4

The below code worked for me -

window.open('location', '_self', '');
window.close();

Tested on Chrome 43.0.2357.81