NavigateEvent: canIntercept property

Baseline 2026

Newly available

Since January 2026, this feature works across the latest devices and browser versions. This feature might not work in older devices or browsers.

ThecanIntercept read-only property of theNavigateEvent interface returnstrue if the navigation can be intercepted and have its URL rewritten, orfalse otherwise

There are several rules around when a navigation can be intercepted. For example:

You can't intercept cross-origin navigations.
You can intercepthttp orhttps URLs if only thepath,query, andfragment portions of the new URL differ from the current URL.
You can interceptfile URLs if only thequery andfragment portions of the new URL differ.
For other URL types you can intercept the navigation if only thefragment portion differs.

See the spec for more explanation onwhen a Document can have its URL rewritten, including a table of examples.

Value

A boolean value—true if the navigation can be intercepted,false if not.

Examples

navigation.addEventListener("navigate", (event) => {  // Some navigations, e.g. cross-origin navigations, we  // cannot intercept. Let the browser handle those normally.  if (!event.canIntercept) {    return;  }  // Don't intercept fragment navigations or downloads.  if (event.hashChange || event.downloadRequest !== null) {    return;  }  event.intercept({    handler() {      if (event.formData) {        processFormDataAndUpdateUI(event.formData, event.signal);      } else {        doSinglePageAppNav(event.destination, event.signal);      }    },  });});