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

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't close by script any window that is not script created. That is patently false but regardless it is supposed to still do it, even if it requires to pop up an alert to confirm. These are not happening.

So does anyone have real, functional and proven method of closing a window using something like javascript:window.close or javascript:self.close that actually does what is expected and something that happens just fine in every browser that is NOT Chrome based? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and I am looking for Javascript specific solution, nothing JQuery or third party implementation.

Ordinary javascript cannot close windows willy-nilly. This is a security feature, introduced a while ago, to stop various malicious exploits and annoyances.

From the latest working spec for window.close():

The close() method on Window objects should, if all the following conditions are met, close the browsing context A:

• The corresponding browsing context A is script-closable.
• The browsing context of the incumbent script is familiar with the browsing context A.
• The browsing context of the incumbent script is allowed to navigate the browsing context A.

A browsing context is script-closable if it is an auxiliary browsing context that was created by a script(as opposed to by an action of the user), or if it is a browsing context whose session history contains only one Document.

This means, with one small exception, javascript must not be allowed to close a window that was not opened by that same javascript.

Chrome allows that exception -- which it doesn't apply to userscripts -- however Firefox does not. The Firefox implementation flat out states:

This method is only allowed to be called for windows that were opened by a script using the window.open method.

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If you try to use window.close from a Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey / userscript you will get:
Firefox: The error message, "Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script."
Chrome: just silently fails.

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The long-term solution:

The best way to deal with this is to make a Chrome extension and/or Firefox add-on instead. These can reliably close the current window.

However, since the security risks, posed by window.close, are much less for a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script; Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey could reasonably provide this functionality in their API (essentially packaging the extension work for you).
Consider making a feature request.

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The hacky workarounds:

Chrome is currently vulnerable to the "self redirection" exploit. So code like this will currently work in Tampermonkey scripts:

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

This is buggy behavior, IMO, and is liable to be blocked by future releases of Chrome, so use this hack with that in mind.

Firefox is secure against that exploit. So, the only javascript way is to cripple the security settings, one browser at a time.

You can open up about:config and set
allow_scripts_to_close_windows to true.

If your script is for personal use, go ahead and do that. If you ask anyone else to turn that setting on, they would be smart, and justified, to decline with prejudice.

There currently is no equivalent setting for Chrome.

From my observation, this update fixed the issue on using window.close() to close the popup window. You will see this in the console when it fail, "Scripts may close only the windows that were opened by it.". That means The hacky workarounds (Brock Adams's answer) may not work in the latest release.

So, in the previous Chrome released builds, the below code block may worked but not with this update.

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

For this update, you have to update your code accordingly to close the popup window. One of the solution is to grab the popup window id and use

chrome.windows.remove(integer windowId, function callback)

method to remove it. Chrome extension windows API can be found at chrome.windows.

Actually my chrome extension MarkView was facing this issue and I had to update my code to make it work for this Chrome Update. By the way, MarkView is tool to read and write Awesome Markdown Files, it provides features including Content Outline, Sortable Tables and code block syntax highlight with line number.

I also created this post, any comments are welcome.

I use top.close() to close a tab. window.close() or other open...close didn't work for me.