Restart google chrome using javascript

Question

In chrome, if I go to chrome://flags/ and make a change on the flags page ( enable/disabe features ), a button appears at the bottom of the page which when clicked restarts chrome and re-opens the pages that were opened. Does anyone know what javascript code allows that to happen ?

This is the html where the button appears

<div class="needs-restart" jsdisplay="needsRestart">
        <div i18n-content="flagsRestartNotice">NEEDS_RESTART</div>
        <button class="experiment-restart-button"
                type="button"
                i18n-content="flagsRestartButton">RESTART</button>
</div>

Thanks

Answer 1

A restartBrowser() function is called from the click of that button.

From flags.js:

/**
 * Asks the C++ FlagsDOMHandler to restart the browser (restoring tabs).
 */
function restartBrowser() {
  chrome.send('restartBrowser');
}

Like the comment implies, it hooks into the C++ code behind Chrome, which will attempt a restart.

Answer 2

Javascript by itself does not allow you to restart the browser. If it did, websites could restart your browser whenever they wanted, which would be annoying for the user. The chrome://flags/ has special permission to interact with the browser and tell it to request a restart. This code is not shown; it's part of Chrome.

Answer 3

I think there is no javascript solution for that but you can type in the url bar : chrome://restart

in order to restart google chrome manually.

If you try this trick using Javascript:

window.location = 'chrome://restart';

then you will get an error message that says "Not allowed to load local resource:"