Get Browser Tabs ·

Supported platforms: macOS only. Supported browsers: Safari, Google Chrome.

Easily retrieve information about active tab from Node.js.

Usage

import { getActiveTabInfo } from "read-browser-tabs";

// if google and chrome are running safari always takes precedence by default
await getActiveTabInfo();
//=>
// {
//   erroredBrowsers: [],
//   tabInfo: {
//     url: 'https://github.com/zbrateam/Zebra',
//     title: 'GitHub - zbrateam/Zebra: A Useful Package Manager for iOS',
//     browserTitle: 'safari'
//   }
// }

await getActiveTabInfo({
    // try to get data from google chrome and if it's not running then try from safari
    browsers: ["google chrome", "safari"]
});
//=>
// {
//   erroredBrowsers: [],
//   tabInfo: {
//     url: 'https://github.com/jsdoc/jsdoc',
//     title: 'jsdoc/jsdoc: An API documentation generator for JavaScript.',
//     browserTitle: 'google chrome'
//   }
// }

// for example only safari is running
await getActiveTabInfo({
    // but here we are trying to get info from google chrome ONLY
    browsers: ["google chrome"]
});
// {
//   erroredBrowsers: [],
//   tabInfo: null
// }

Things to Note

• It usually takes 50 - 300ms to get info. It's a good practice to add timeout for 500ms.
• When you first run this script from app user will see the message:

Why?

I used get-chrome-tabs in past, but it has a huge performance issue, with handling multiple opened windows. That's because it travels over all windows and tabs and of course it takes A LOT of time. This module solves the problem by accessing only the active (focused) tab. And it supports Safari!

It Could be Better

This module VERY unreliable, like it can break in any day. Apple created JXA and it's very bad. Sometimes I get execution error: Error: Error: AppleEvent handler failed. because of .properties(). And it seems there is no official documentation for JXA, so I don't want waste my time any more. That's why this module doesn't have wide browsers support (but it could), I just don't know how to introspect properties on Application instance. Also see this answer.

Please, let me know if you have an idea how to make this module work on all platforms.