Switch current tab from notification in Google Chrome extension

Question

Am I missing something in the Chrome tabs documentation or is there a way for an extension to change the currently active tab?

I have an extension which, once the tab has finished loading, pops up a notification and, if the loaded tab is not selected, offers the user the change to change it to selected. Or at least that's what I want it to do.

Reading the notifications API I don't see any mention of a way of accessing chrome.tabs.get, but there is chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage(). Anyone have any idea on how to turn that into what I'm looking to do?

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can make a tab selected with:

chrome.tabs.update(tabId, {highlighted: true});

Chrome API is available inside notification html, so you can call any chrome.* method you like.

Answer 2

Not sure, but could you try adding a content script in an inactive tab (or just in all tabs), then sending a request to a non-active tab (sendRequest)? The content script should execute window.focus(). Again, not sure whether this works.

Update the inactive tab, and pass { selected: true }. That should work, since it's listed as an available setting there.