Navigation: back() method

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The back() method of the Navigation interface navigates backwards by one entry in the navigation history.

Syntax

js
back(options)

Parameters

options Optional

An options object containing the following properties:

info Optional

Developer-defined information to be passed along to the navigate event, made available in NavigateEvent.info. This can be any data type. You might, for example, wish to display newly-navigated content with a different animation depending on how it was navigated to (swipe left, swipe right, or go home). A string indicating which animation to use could be passed in as info.

Return value

An object with the following properties:

committed

A Promise which will fulfill when the visible URL has changed and a new NavigationHistoryEntry has been created.

finished

A Promise which will fulfill when all promises returned by the intercept() handler are fulfilled. This is equivalent to the NavigationTransition.finished promise fulfilling, when the navigatesuccess event fires.

Either one of these promises rejects if the navigation has failed for some reason.

Exceptions

InvalidStateError DOMException

Thrown if the Navigation.currentEntry's NavigationHistoryEntry.index value is -1 or 0, i.e. either the current Document is not yet active, or the current history entry is the first one in the history, meaning that backwards navigation is not possible, or if the current Document is unloading.

Examples

js
async function backHandler() {
  if (navigation.canGoBack) {
    await navigation.back().finished;
    // Handle any required clean-up after
    // navigation has finished
  } else {
    displayBanner("You are on the first page");
  }
}

async function forwardHandler() {
  if (navigation.canGoForward) {
    await navigation.forward().finished;
    // Handle any required clean-up after
    // navigation has finished
  } else {
    displayBanner("You are on the last page");
  }
}

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-navigation-back-dev

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also