Window: pageshow event

The pageshow event is sent to a Window when the browser navigates to a new document.

This includes:

• Initially loading the page.
• Navigating to the page from another page in the same window or tab.
• Restoring a frozen page on mobile OSes.
• Returning to the page using the browser’s forward or back buttons (including when restored from the bfcache).
• Opening a page in a background tab.
• Prerendering a page, even before it is activated.

[!WARNING] Despite the name, the pageshow event does not fire when the page is actually shown to the user. For example, it may be opened in a background tab or prerendered. If you are interested in responding to the page being shown to the user, use the following events:

• pagereveal: Sent when a page is first rendered.
• visibilitychange: Sent each time a page’s visibility changes.
• prerenderingchange: Sent when a prerendered page is activated.

[!NOTE] During the initial page load, the pageshow event fires after the load event.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

addEventListener("pageshow", (event) => { })

onpageshow = (event) => { }

Event type

A PageTransitionEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event handler aliases

In addition to the Window interface, the event handler property onpageshow is also available on the following targets:

• HTMLBodyElement
• HTMLFrameSetElement
• SVGSVGElement

Examples

This example sets up event handlers for events listed in the array events. The handler, eventLogger(), logs the type of event that occurred to the console, and includes the value of the persisted flag on pageshow and pagehide events.

JavaScript

const events = ["pagehide", "pageshow", "unload", "load"];

const eventLogger = (event) => {
  switch (event.type) {
    case "pagehide":
    case "pageshow": {
      let isPersisted = event.persisted ? "persisted" : "not persisted";
      console.log(`Event: ${event.type} - ${isPersisted}`);
      break;
    }
    default:
      console.log(`Event: ${event.type}`);
      break;
  }
};

events.forEach((eventName) => window.addEventListener(eventName, eventLogger));

HTML

<p>
  Open the console and watch the output as you navigate to and from this page.
  Try loading new pages into this tab, then navigating forward and backward
  through history, noting the events' output to the log.
</p>

Results

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• pagehide