How to check if a tab is active in React

Before diving into the specifics of how to detect active tab engagement, I'd like to share a real-world web3 scenario where this was a use case. Imagine a user toggling between two different tabs, each operating on the same wallet but different networks. For instance, one decentralized finance (DeFi) application could be running on Arbitrum while the other functions on Ethereum. In such cases, a casual alert indicating a network mismatch from MetaMask could lead to users prematurely closing your website. Therefore, it's crucial to discern whether the user is actively viewing your tab before deploying any alert regarding network discrepancies.

To address this challenge, we turn our attention to one particularly handy DOM event: visibilitychange. This event allows us to detect changes in the visibility state of the tab, i.e., whether it's in focus or in the background.

So, how do we implement this in a React application?

It is as straightforward as it gets. To ensure the user is actively viewing the tab when an alert is initiated, you can listen to the visibilitychange event and check the document.visibilityState property.

The following demonstrates a simplified example:

import { useCallback, useEffect, useState } from 'react';

const useIsTabActive = () => {
  const [isTabVisible, setIsTabVisible] = useState(true);

  const handleVisibilityChange = useCallback(() => {
    setIsTabVisible(document.visibilityState === 'visible');
  }, []);

  useEffect(() => {
    document.addEventListener('visibilitychange', handleVisibilityChange);
    return () => {
      document.removeEventListener('visibilitychange', handleVisibilityChange);
    };
  }, []);

  return isTabVisible;
};

export default useIsTabActive;

By incorporating this simple check into your web3 applications, you can significantly improve your user experience. Not only does it prevent unnecessary alerts when a user is not actively engaging with your application, but it also respects their attention and focus, leading to a more professional and user-centric application.

Stay tuned for further discussions on improving user experience in web3 applications in upcoming posts.