I'd need the following functionality for Google Chrome. I didn't find a mand line parameter that could help me here.

• check if a URL is open in one of the Google Chrome tabs
• if so, activate this tab
• if not, open the URL in a new tab

Any ideas how to solve this?

I'd need the following functionality for Google Chrome. I didn't find a mand line parameter that could help me here.

• check if a URL is open in one of the Google Chrome tabs
• if so, activate this tab
• if not, open the URL in a new tab

Any ideas how to solve this?

• javascript
• google-chrome

• 5 I don't think you'll get access to this via JavaScript or similar due to this violating the end-users security. You'll need to build a browser extension/addon. – scunliffe Commented Dec 7, 2010 at 14:12

2 Answers 2

I think Chrome extensions docs - Tabs will help you!

Just to make it clear you can't NOT access anything beyond your Domain in JavaScript because of Same origin policy.

Using Javascript, triggering an alert can have the desired effect. Run this code in your console in one tab and switch to another tab in the same browser.

setTimeout(function(){ 
    alert("Switched tabs");
}, 
5000);

The alert appearing after the timeout will trigger tab switch. Or you can do something similar! This should however be used if absolutely necessary to move user from current tab, like Google Calendar does.

Update 2019

With new versions of Chrome, this no longer works. As pointed out in the ment below, Chrome now shows a small icon in the tab to show a window/alert has been triggered