How to disable chrome from opening up "new window" and "tabs"?

browser-support, google-chrome, google-chrome-extension, settings, window

Solution

Possible approach:

One approach could be building an extension that injects a content script in every page. This content script would parse the DOM and remove all `target` attributes off the anchor elementsand set all `target` attributes of anchor elements to `_self`.

Caveats:

- There are dynamically inserted elements (including anchor elements) on many pages.

- There are dynamically changing elements (including anchor elements) on some pages.

- Not all pages/tabs are opened through links (e.g. some page could use `window.open()`).

Solution:

You could use a MutationObserver that watches for anchor elements being inserted or having their `target` attribute modified and make the appropriate adjustments.

You still need to take care of tabs opened by other means (e.g. `window.open()`) if it is extremely important to you (but those cases should be very very few, so it might not be worth the trouble).

Sample code:

manifest.json:

{
    "manifest_version": 2,

    "name":    "Test Extension",
    "version": "0.0",

    "content_scripts": [{
        "matches":    ["*://*/*"],
        "js":         ["content.js"],
        "run_at":     "document_start",
        "all_frames": true
    }]
}

content.js:

/* Define helper functions */
var processAnchor = function(a) {
    //if (a.hasAttribute('target')) {
    //    a.removeAttribute('target');
    //}
    a.setAttribute('target', '_self');
};

/* Define the observer for watching over inserted elements */
var insertedObserver = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {
    mutations.forEach(function(m) {
        var inserted = [].slice.call(m.addedNodes);
        while (inserted.length > 0) {
            var elem = inserted.shift();
            [].slice.call(elem.children || []).forEach(function(el) {
                inserted.push(el);
            });
            if (elem.nodeName === 'A') {
                processAnchor(elem);
            }
        }
    });
});

/* Define the observer for watching over
 * modified attributes of anchor elements */
var modifiedObserver = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {
    mutations.forEach(function(m) {
        if ((m.type === 'attributes') && (m.target.nodeName === 'A')) {
            processAnchor(m.target);
        }
    });
});

/* Start observing */
insertedObserver.observe(document.documentElement, {
    childList: true,
    subtree: true
});
modifiedObserver.observe(document.documentElement, {
    attributes: true,
    substree: true
});

Problem

Original source