How to get browsing history using history API in Chrome extension

Question

How can I get the URLs of recently visited tabs using chrome.history API, specifically, the last 10 URLs visited?

Answer 1

Pass an empty string as your query to the search() method of the chrome.history API. For example, this will log the 10 most recently visited URLs to the console:

chrome.history.search({text: '', maxResults: 10}, function(data) {
    data.forEach(function(page) {
        console.log(page.url);
    });
});

Answer 2

You have to put:

"permissions": [
      "history"
    ],

in you manifest.json file of the extension, and then your code can look like this:

chrome.history.search({
  'text': '',               // Return every history item....
  'startTime': oneWeekAgo,  // that was accessed less than one week ago.
  'maxResults': 100         // Optionally state a limit
},
function(historyItems) {
  // For each history item, get details on all visits.
  for (var i = 0; i < historyItems.length; ++i) {
    var url = historyItems[i].url;
     // do whatever you want with this visited url
  }
 }