You might have a form created in your React App that user might try to close by closing the tab, reloading the page or close the browser directly. You might want to prompt the user in this case to alert them that there might be unsaved changes that might be lost.

The following example binds the “beforeunload” event to the App Component and the unbinds it on the componentwillunmount event. This could apply to form component and not the Parent App component.

export default class App extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props)
    this.handleUnload = this.handleUnload.bind(this);
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    window.addEventListener('beforeunload', this.handleUnload);
  }

  componentWillUnmount() {
    window.removeEventListener('beforeunload', this.handleUnload);
  }

  handleUnload(e) {
    var message = "\o/";

    (e || window.event).returnValue = message; //Gecko + IE
    return message;
  }

}

You can even call an API to make the necessary changes required for your App at the back-end before the browser unloads the Page. But please be careful in case the user decides to cancel and stays on the page. I’ve tested the above code on Google Chrome and Edge Chromium.

I haven’t really found a way that let’s you customize the prompt message in the modern browsers. And there is no way to capture the Leave/Cancel (stay) button click events. Let me know if you find a way to capture these events. However, I believe the browser has given control to the user more than the Page in case of unload.