omnibox.onInputChanged

Fired whenever the user changes their input, after they have started interacting with your extension by entering its keyword in the address bar and then pressing the space key.

This is the event you'll use to populate the address bar's drop-down list with suggestions. The event listener is passed:

  • the current user input (not including the keyword itself or the space after it)
  • a function which the listener can call with an array of omnibox.SuggestResult objects, one for each suggestion. Only the first six suggestions will be displayed.

Syntax

js
browser.omnibox.onInputChanged.addListener(listener)
browser.omnibox.onInputChanged.removeListener(listener)
browser.omnibox.onInputChanged.hasListener(listener)

Events have three functions:

addListener(listener)

Adds a listener to this event.

removeListener(listener)

Stop listening to this event. The listener argument is the listener to remove.

hasListener(listener)

Check whether listener is registered for this event. Returns true if it is listening, false otherwise.

addListener syntax

The listener function is passed two parameters: a string text, and the function suggest.

Parameters

text

String. The current user input in the address bar, not including the extension's keyword itself or the space after the keyword. Use this to decide which suggestions to display in the drop-down list.

suggest

Function. A function that the event listener can call to supply suggestions for the address bar's drop-down list. The function expects to receive an array of omnibox.SuggestResult objects, one for each suggestion. Only the first six suggestions will be displayed.

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

Examples

This example interprets the user's input as a CSS property name and populates the drop-down list with one omnibox.SuggestResult object for each CSS property matching the input. The description property of SuggestResult is the full name of the property, and the content is the MDN page for that property.

The example also listens to omnibox.onInputEntered, and opens the MDN page corresponding to the selection, according to the omnibox.OnInputEnteredDisposition argument.

js
browser.omnibox.setDefaultSuggestion({
  description: "Type the name of a CSS property",
});

/*
Very short list of a few CSS properties.
*/
const props = [
  "animation",
  "background",
  "border",
  "box-shadow",
  "color",
  "display",
  "flex",
  "flex",
  "float",
  "font",
  "grid",
  "margin",
  "opacity",
  "overflow",
  "padding",
  "position",
  "transform",
  "transition",
];

const baseURL = "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/";

/*
Return an array of SuggestResult objects,
one for each CSS property that matches the user's input.
*/
function getMatchingProperties(input) {
  const result = [];
  for (const prop of props) {
    if (prop.startsWith(input)) {
      console.log(prop);
      const suggestion = {
        content: `${baseURL}${prop}`,
        description: prop,
      };
      result.push(suggestion);
    } else if (result.length !== 0) {
      return result;
    }
  }
  return result;
}

browser.omnibox.onInputChanged.addListener((input, suggest) => {
  suggest(getMatchingProperties(input));
});

browser.omnibox.onInputEntered.addListener((url, disposition) => {
  switch (disposition) {
    case "currentTab":
      browser.tabs.update({ url });
      break;
    case "newForegroundTab":
      browser.tabs.create({ url });
      break;
    case "newBackgroundTab":
      browser.tabs.create({ url, active: false });
      break;
  }
});

Example extensions

Note: This API is based on Chromium's chrome.omnibox API.