Check if localStorage is available

Question

I know there has been many questions about checking for localStorage but what if someone manually shuts it off in their browser? Here\'s the code I\'m using to

Answer 1

MDN updated the storage detect function. In 2018, it's more reliable:

function storageAvailable() {
    try {
        var storage = window['localStorage'],
            x = '__storage_test__';
        storage.setItem(x, x);
        storage.removeItem(x);
        return true;
    }
    catch(e) {
        return e instanceof DOMException && (
            // everything except Firefox
            e.code === 22 ||
            // Firefox
            e.code === 1014 ||
            // test name field too, because code might not be present
            // everything except Firefox
            e.name === 'QuotaExceededError' ||
            // Firefox
            e.name === 'NS_ERROR_DOM_QUOTA_REACHED') &&
            // acknowledge QuotaExceededError only if there's something already stored
            storage && storage.length !== 0;
    }
}

Browsers that support localStorage will have a property on the window object named localStorage. However, for various reasons, just asserting that property exists may throw exceptions. If it does exist, that is still no guarantee that localStorage is actually available, as various browsers offer settings that disable localStorage. So a browser may support localStorage, but not make it available to the scripts on the page. One example of that is Safari, which in Private Browsing mode gives us an empty localStorage object with a quota of zero, effectively making it unusable. However, we might still get a legitimate QuotaExceededError, which only means that we've used up all available storage space, but storage is actually available. Our feature detect should take these scenarios into account.

See here for a brief history of feature-detecting localStorage.