Opening windows from the renderer

    • clicking on links or submitting forms adorned with target=_blank

    For same-origin content, the new window is created within the same process, enabling the parent to access the child window directly. This can be very useful for app sub-windows that act as preference panels, or similar, as the parent can render to the sub-window directly, as if it were a div in the parent. This is the same behavior as in the browser.

    Electron pairs this native Chrome Window with a BrowserWindow under the hood. You can take advantage of all the customization available when creating a BrowserWindow in the main process by using webContents.setWindowOpenHandler() for renderer-created windows.

    • url string
    • frameName string (optional)
    • features string (optional)

    Returns | null

    features is a comma-separated key-value list, following the standard format of the browser. Electron will parse out of this list where possible, for convenience. For full control and better ergonomics, consider using webContents.setWindowOpenHandler to customize the BrowserWindow creation.

    For example:

    Notes:

    • Context isolation will always be enabled in the opened window if it is enabled on the parent window.
    • JavaScript will always be disabled in the opened window if it is disabled on the parent window.
    • Non-standard features (that are not handled by Chromium or Electron) given in features will be passed to any registered webContents‘s did-create-window event handler in the argument.
    • When opening about:blank, the child window’s WebPreferences will be copied from the parent window, and there is no way to override it because Chromium skips browser side navigation in this case.

    In addition to passing in action and overrideBrowserWindowOptions, outlivesOpener can be passed like: { action: 'allow', outlivesOpener: true, overrideBrowserWindowOptions: { ... } }. If set to true, the newly created window will not close when the opener window closes. The default value is false.

    Native example