Communication between browser tabs/windows using JavaScript [duplicate]

What's the most reliable way to have JavaScript communicate between tabs/windows of the same browser? For example, when Tab 2 starts audio playback, Tab 1 somehow knows about this and can pause its player.

I'm building a site with a music player... so at the moment if you open two tabs to the site, you could start music on both. This is obviously bad, so I'm trying to find a solution.

For a more modern solution check out https://stackoverflow.com/a/12514384/270274

Quote:

I'm sticking to the shared local data solution mentioned in the question using localStorage. It seems to be the best solution in terms of reliability, performance, and browser compatibility.

localStorage is implemented in all modern browsers.

The storage event fires when other tabs makes changes to localStorage. This is quite handy for communication purposes.

Reference:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/
http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/#the-storage-event

Update to a modern solution, leaving the old one below for historical reasons.

You can use Broadcast Channel API to send and receive messages https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Broadcast_Channel_API

// Connection to a broadcast channel
const bc = new BroadcastChannel('test_channel');

// Example of sending of a very simple message
// It doesn't have to be a string, it could be a JS object
bc.postMessage('This is a test message.');

To receive the message:

// A handler that only logs the event to the console:
bc.onmessage = function (ev) {
  console.log(ev);
}

and to close the channel:

// Disconnect the channel
bc.close();

THIS IS HISTORICAL OLD WAY TO DO IT, USE THE METHOD ABOVE FOR MODERN BROWSERS!

You can communicate between browser windows (and tabs too) using cookies.

Here is an example of sender and receiver:

sender.html

<h1>Sender</h1>

<p>Type into the text box below and watch the text 
   appear automatically in the receiver.</p>

<form name="sender">
<input type="text" name="message" size="30" value="">
<input type="reset" value="Clean">
</form>

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
function setCookie(value) {
    document.cookie = "cookie-msg-test=" + value + "; path=/";
    return true;
}
function updateMessage() {
    var t = document.forms['sender'].elements['message'];
    setCookie(t.value);
    setTimeout(updateMessage, 100);
}
updateMessage();
//--></script>

receiver.html:

<h1>Receiver</h1>

<p>Watch the text appear in the text box below as you type it in the sender.</p>

<form name="receiver">
<input type="text" name="message" size="30" value="" readonly disabled>
</form>

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
function getCookie() {
    var cname = "cookie-msg-test=";
    var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
    for (var i=0; i < ca.length; i++) {
        var c = ca[i];
        while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
        if (c.indexOf(cname) == 0) {
            return c.substring(cname.length, c.length);
        }
    }
    return null;
}
function updateMessage() {
    var text = getCookie();
    document.forms['receiver'].elements['message'].value = text;
    setTimeout(updateMessage, 100);
}
updateMessage();
//--></script>

There is also an experimental technology called Broadcast Channel API that is designed specifically for communication between different browser contexts with same origin. You can post messages to and recieve messages from another browser context without having a reference to it:

var channel = new BroadcastChannel("foo");
channel.onmessage = function( e ) {
  // Process messages from other contexts.
};
// Send message to other listening contexts.
channel.postMessage({ value: 42, type: "bar"});

Obviously this is experiental technology and is not supported accross all browsers yet.