DEV Community

Christian Heilmann
Christian Heilmann

Posted on • Originally published at christianheilmann.com

Showing different titles depending if the tab is active or not

I just encountered a sneaky thing I had not seen, although it probably worked in 1999 already. A web site was showing a different title on the tab, depending on it being active or not.

Different titles showing on active and inactive tab

The whole trick is to use the blur and focus event handlers on the window to change the title.

window.onblur = function() {
    document.title = 'Please come back!';
}
window.onfocus = function() {
    document.title = 'You have 6 items';
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You could also change the favicon that way. Maybe this is a common practice and it feels pretty spammy, but there may be some good use cases for it, too.

If you don't want to clobber other events, it is better to use addEventListener:

let activeTitle = 'You have 6 items';
let inactiveTitle = 'Please come back';
document.title = activeTitle;
window.addEventListener('blur', e => {
    document.title = inactiveTitle;
});
window.addEventListener('focus', e => {
    document.title = activeTitle;
});
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Top comments (0)