Create a flashing tab notification page title

Updated October 2026: the package is now flashing-page-title, an ES module, with a new demo site. The examples below are up to date.

Page title notifications switch between the default page title and a notification message continously in order to grab the user's attention. This is commonly used with chat applications.

I've written a small, dependency-free library which can be used to switch on and off page title notifications.

Install

npm install flashing-page-title

Usage

To activate the page title notification call the following:

import { flashingPageTitle } from "flashing-page-title";

flashingPageTitle.on("New Message!");

Then call the following to turn it off, which also restores the original page title:

flashingPageTitle.off();

The default speed is 1000 milliseconds, but this can be customised by passing a 2nd parameter to the on() function.

flashingPageTitle.on("New Message!", 5000);

Without a bundler

You can also load it straight into the page as an ES module:

<script type="module">
  import { flashingPageTitle } from "https://esm.sh/flashing-page-title@3";

  flashingPageTitle.on("New Message!");
</script>

Demo

Try it out, with copyable examples for React and more:

https://flashing-page-title.curtiscode.dev

GitHub

Full source code available on GitHub. Please feel free to raise any issues or pull requests!

https://github.com/curtiscde/flashing-page-title