Detect When Users Switch Tabs using JavaScript

In this article, I'll show you how to find out when users change tabs in browsers using JavaScript. It's going to be fun, it's helpful to see how often the user loses his attention. You can even use it to add the data to the database (it is out of the scope of this article).

There are two ways I know how to solve this problem. So, I'll be showing you both of them.

Method - 1

In this method, we will use two event listeners focus (when the user focuses on your website or window) and blur (when the user loses focus)

We don't need HTML actually, because when users are on another tab so they won't see your website page. Only JavaScript will do:

// when the user loses focus
window.addEventListener("blur", () => {
    document.title = "Breakup";
});

// when the user's focus is back to your tab (website) again
window.addEventListener("focus", () => {
    document.title = "Patch Up";
});

Method - 2

In this method, we only need one event listener (visibilitychange). It has a property called visibilityState which we can use to detect the window switching state.

document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", () => {
    // it could be either hidden or visible
    document.title = document.visibilityState;    
});

You can use these to add many functionality to your website such as stop music or video when the user loses focus:

document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", () => {
  if (document.visibilityState === 'visible') {
    music.play();
  } else {
    music.pause();
  }
});

If you want to try it yourself then check out LIVE

Wrapping up:

That's all you need to detect when users switch tabs. Both methods work as expected. You can use any of them. If you enjoyed this article, then don't forget to give ❤️ and if you have any questions or feedback then don't hesitate to drop them in the comments below. I'll see in the next one.

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Comments

[Edgar Alves]

Just a side note, the "blur" event will trigger if you leave the tab opened but just focus another app on your machine... while the visibilitychange will only trigger if you switch to another tab.

[Jatin Sharma]

I didn't know that, thanks for the note I'll look into it ✨

[official_dulin]

Real world usage: react-query Window Focus Refetching

[Jatin Sharma]

Thanks for this mate :)

[Wisdom-Samuel7]

Simple and a Great one

[Jatin Sharma]

Thanks.

[Lenardo de Bruine]

Thanks! That's useful for example to trigger people to come back :).
You can save the meta document title so when a user come's back the normall meta title is displayed.

        var documentTitle = document.title;

        window.addEventListener("blur", function() {
            document.title = "👋 Hi, come back!";
        });

        window.addEventListener("focus", function() {
            document.title = documentTitle;
        });

[Jatin Sharma]

Yes, you can do that. You can also send the notifications to the user to come back using Notifications API

[Sonia]

We can track the tab switch but there will be an issue when the user presses the back button.

[Jatin Sharma]

Well, it depends if you have implemented this functionality on the whole website or a single page. There could be two cases-

• When the user presses the back button and leaves the website. In this case, we can't do anything.
• When the user presses the back button but stays on the same website then it will load the initial status of the page (visible) as the user hasn't left the tab.

[Al - Naucode]

Thank you for the post, bookmarked!

[Jatin Sharma]

That's great. It's my pleasure ☺️

[Archit Sharma]

Thank you so much for this awesome article

[Jatin Sharma]

This is a pleasure, the positive feedbacks are always inspiring.

[Gary]

You can use this to evaluate the quality of your articles. If the user switches between tabs, they may not like your article. But I wouldn't change the tab title - it's annoying.

[Jatin Sharma]

Changing the title is all about showing that it works.I won't change title either.

[Faizal Ardian Putra]

Cool! Great!

[Jatin Sharma]

Thanks mate 😊

[Faizal Ardian Putra]

Cool!