Detect If Browser Tab Has Focus

Question

Yes, window.onfocus and window.onblur should work for your scenario:

http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/detect-browser-window-focus

Important Edit: This answer is outdated. Since writing it, the Visibility API (mdn, example, spec) has been introduced. It is the better way to solve this problem.

---

var focused = true;

window.onfocus = function() {
    focused = true;
};
window.onblur = function() {
    focused = false;
};

AFAIK, focus and blur are all supported on...everything. (see http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/events/index.html )

Surprising to see nobody mentioned document.hasFocus

if (document.hasFocus()) console.log('Tab is active')

MDN has more information.

While searching about this problem, I found a recommendation that Page Visibility API should be used. Most modern browsers support this API according to Can I Use: http://caniuse.com/#feat=pagevisibility.

Here's a working example (derived from this snippet):

$(document).ready(function() {
  var hidden, visibilityState, visibilityChange;

  if (typeof document.hidden !== "undefined") {
    hidden = "hidden", visibilityChange = "visibilitychange", visibilityState = "visibilityState";
  } else if (typeof document.msHidden !== "undefined") {
    hidden = "msHidden", visibilityChange = "msvisibilitychange", visibilityState = "msVisibilityState";
  }

  var document_hidden = document[hidden];

  document.addEventListener(visibilityChange, function() {
    if(document_hidden != document[hidden]) {
      if(document[hidden]) {
        // Document hidden
      } else {
        // Document shown
      }

      document_hidden = document[hidden];
    }
  });
});

Update: The example above used to have prefixed properties for Gecko and WebKit browsers, but I removed that implementation because these browsers have been offering Page Visibility API without a prefix for a while now. I kept Microsoft specific prefix in order to stay compatible with IE10.

I would do it this way (Reference http://www.w3.org/TR/page-visibility/):

    window.onload = function() {

        // check the visiblility of the page
        var hidden, visibilityState, visibilityChange;

        if (typeof document.hidden !== "undefined") {
            hidden = "hidden", visibilityChange = "visibilitychange", visibilityState = "visibilityState";
        }
        else if (typeof document.mozHidden !== "undefined") {
            hidden = "mozHidden", visibilityChange = "mozvisibilitychange", visibilityState = "mozVisibilityState";
        }
        else if (typeof document.msHidden !== "undefined") {
            hidden = "msHidden", visibilityChange = "msvisibilitychange", visibilityState = "msVisibilityState";
        }
        else if (typeof document.webkitHidden !== "undefined") {
            hidden = "webkitHidden", visibilityChange = "webkitvisibilitychange", visibilityState = "webkitVisibilityState";
        }


        if (typeof document.addEventListener === "undefined" || typeof hidden === "undefined") {
            // not supported
        }
        else {
            document.addEventListener(visibilityChange, function() {
                console.log("hidden: " + document[hidden]);
                console.log(document[visibilityState]);

                switch (document[visibilityState]) {
                case "visible":
                    // visible
                    break;
                case "hidden":
                    // hidden
                    break;
                }
            }, false);
        }

        if (document[visibilityState] === "visible") {
            // visible
        }

    };  

Posting this answer because I found a bug in accepted answer.

The bug is when you open a developer console on the focused window and click anywhere on it, the developer console has the focus now, at this point window.onfocus or window.onblur has no effect whatsoever.

So here is my solution,

document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", function() {
    if (document.visibilityState === 'visible') {
        console.log('has focus');
    } else {
        console.log('lost focus');
    }
});

Read more https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/visibilitychange_event