How can a Safari extension know if Private Browsing mode is on?

Question

I'm writing a Safari extension and want it to behave differently when the user turns on Private Browsing mode (I want to respect this private mode).

I found no mention of this in Apple's docs.

I'm aware of the discussion in this thread:

Detecting if a browser is using Private Browsing mode

which suggests using a (browser-agnostic) js-CSS trick to detect private-browsing mode, but was hoping there's some hook built in to Safari that I could use for my extension.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can query the boolean safari.application.privateBrowsing.enabled to check if private browsing is enabled or not.

You can also attach event listeners to trigger custom code when private browsing is activated or deactivated.

safari.application.privateBrowsing.addEventListener('activate', function(e) {
  console.log("Private browsing activated");
});

safari.application.privateBrowsing.addEventListener('deactivate', function(e) {
  console.log("Private browsing deactivated");
});

Source: Apple Docs