
How do you programmatically navigate to a new page or URL when coding in JavaScript?

JavaScript has a built-in way to do this using the [Location](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Location) API interface, which represents the location (URL) of the current web page you're located on. The global `Window` interface has access to the `Location` object that can be used via `window.location`.

Included in the `Location` interface is a `href` value, which represents a [USVString](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USVString) containing the whole URL for a page.

This value can also be assigned a different and new URL:

```
---
type: file
label: JavaScript
language: js
---
window.location.href = "https://www.google.com"
```

By setting a new value for location.href, the page will navigate to the new URL you provide.

To quickly test this, open the developer tools in your favorite browser and execute the above code in the JavaScript console. The page should redirect to the Google homepage.

By navigating to a new page in this manner, the original page will stay in the session `History`. Therefore, users will be able to use the back button in their browser to return to the original page.

<aside class="info"><p>If you want the original URL removed from the session <code>History</code> to stop user's ability to use the back button in their browser, you should use the <code>location.replace()</code> method.</p></aside>

For more information on the browser support for the `location.href` method, see its [MDN web docs page](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Location/href#Browser_compatibility).

Thanks for reading and happy coding!


How to programmatically navigate to a new page or URL in JavaScript by assigning a new URL to the location.href value.

How To Navigate To A New Page Using JavaScript