Sending user to their browser's Home Page using Javascript

Question

Is it possible to get a browser's home page using Javascript?

I'd like to place a link on a page that goes to the home page set in the browser.

Answer 1

EDIT: simplified answer

Identify browsers and:

• Call window.home(); for all browsers

• Call window.location.href = "about:home"; for IE

To do so you can use http://jquery.thewikies.com/browser/

The jQuery Browser Plugin is an addon for jQuery that makes it easy to uniquely identify your visitors' browsers.

---

Other solutions:

 <script language="javascript">
    function gohome(){
      if (typeof window.home == 'function'){ // The rest of the world
        window.home();
      } else if (document.all) { // For IE 
        window.location.href = "about:home";
      } else {
        document.write("<p>Please click on your browser's Home
button.</p>");
      }
    }
  </script>

This is via this website. The poster states that there are issues to target Safari. This can be fixed using this other website.

Using the CSS tricks explained there you can then do:

<script type="text/javascript">
   isSafari3 = false;
   if(window.devicePixelRatio) isSafari3 = true;
</script>

and use this in the script above to call the correct function:

if (typeof window.home == 'function' || isSafari3)

Answer 2

Default home page (default new tab) URL:

Google Chrome:

https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab

Firefox and IE:

about:home

Opera:

opera:speeddial

Safari:

http://livepage.apple.com

---

To find out the default home page URL of your browser, go to your home page and type location.href in the console. Note that the browser might redirect you to your locale, so you'll need to find out the page before redirection (it happens on Chrome).

---

If you're using this browser detection code you can use this one-liner to get the correct url:

var homepageurl = browser == 'gc' ? 'https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab' : browser == 'op' ? 'about:speeddial' : browser=='sa' ? 'http://livepage.apple.com' : 'about:home'

Browser detection code JSFiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/oriadam/ncb4n882/

Answer 3

Not sure if there is a cross-browser solution. In IE you can use the HomePage behavior and call navigateHomePage.

Answer 4

For FF and the like: window.home();

For IE: location = "about:home";

Answer 5

window.home() didn't work for me in FF37, but this was fine:

location.href = "about:home";