storage

Enables extensions to store and retrieve data, and listen for changes to stored items.

The storage system is based on the Web Storage API, with a few differences. Among other differences, these include:

  • It's asynchronous.
  • Values are scoped to the extension, not to a specific domain (i.e. the same set of key/value pairs are available to all scripts in the background context and content scripts).
  • The values stored can be any JSON-ifiable value, not just String. Among other things, this includes: Array and Object, but only when their contents can be represented as JSON, which does not include DOM nodes. You don't need to convert your values to JSON Strings prior to storing them, but they are represented as JSON internally, thus the requirement that they be JSON-ifiable.
  • Multiple key/value pairs can be set or retrieved in the same API call.

To use this API you need to include the "storage" permission in your manifest.json file.

Each extension has its own storage area, which can be split into different types of storage.

Although this API is similar to Window.localStorage it is recommended that you don't use Window.localStorage in the extension code to store extension-related data. Firefox will clear data stored by extensions using the localStorage API in various scenarios where users clear their browsing history and data for privacy reasons, while data saved using the storage.local API will be correctly persisted in these scenarios.

You can examine the stored data under the Extension Storage item in the Storage Inspector tab of the developer toolbox, accessible from about:debugging.

Note: The storage area is not encrypted and shouldn't be used for storing confidential user information.

Types

storage.StorageArea

An object representing a storage area.

storage.StorageChange

An object representing a change to a storage area.

Properties

storage has four properties, which represent the different types of available storage area.

storage.local

Represents the local storage area. Items in local storage are local to the machine the extension was installed on.

storage.managed

Represents the managed storage area. Items in managed storage are set by the domain administrator and are read-only for the extension. Trying to modify this namespace results in an error.

storage.session

Represents the session storage area. Items in session storage are stored in memory and are not persisted to disk.

storage.sync

Represents the sync storage area. Items in sync storage are synced by the browser, and are available across all instances of that browser that the user is logged into, across different devices.

Events

storage.onChanged

Fired when one or more items change in any of the storage areas.

Browser compatibility

Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Firefox for Android
Safari on iOS
storage
StorageArea
StorageArea.clear
StorageArea.get
Supports empty key
StorageArea.getBytesInUse
StorageArea.onChanged
StorageArea.remove
Supports empty key
StorageArea.set
StorageArea.setAccessLevel
StorageChange
local
local.clear
local.get
Supports empty key
local.getBytesInUse
local.onChanged
local.remove
Supports empty key
local.set
managed
managed.clear
managed.get
managed.getBytesInUse
managed.onChanged
managed.remove
managed.set
onChanged
session
session.QUOTA_BYTES
session.clear
session.get
Supports empty key
session.getBytesInUse
session.onChanged
session.remove
Supports empty key
session.set
session.setAccessLevel
sync
sync.clear
sync.get
Supports empty key
sync.getBytesInUse
sync.onChanged
sync.remove
Supports empty key
sync.set

Example extensions

Note: This API is based on Chromium's chrome.storage API. This documentation is derived from storage.json in the Chromium code.