Open extension popup when click on context menu

Question

I have to make an extension that when clicked on text in the context menu, in callback opens the extension menu popup.

chrome.runtime.onInstalled.addListener(function() {
  var context = "selection";
  var title = "Google for Selected Text";
  var id = chrome.contextMenus.create({"title": title, "contexts":["selection"],
                                         "id": "context" + context});  
});

// add click event
chrome.contextMenus.onClicked.addListener(onClickHandler);

// The onClicked callback function.
function onClickHandler(info, tab) {
  var sText = info.selectionText;
  var url = "https://www.google.com/search?q=" + encodeURIComponent(sText);  


    //what i have put here to open extension popup


    };

In this case, when I click on the menu I open a new tab with this search.

Answer 1

There is no way of opening the default browser action popup programmatically. A work around is use content scripts to open a modal or a lightbox and show the contents of your popup.

Another way would be - within the clickhandler of your context menu item, create a new tab and make it inactive and then pass that tab to chrome.windows.create api to create a new popup window.

    chrome.tabs.create({
      url: chrome.extension.getURL('popup.html'),
      active: false
  }, function(tab) {
      // After the tab has been created, open a window to inject the tab
      chrome.windows.create({
          tabId: tab.id,
          type: 'popup',
          focused: true
      });
  });

It is just a work around. Hope it helps.