Managing extension lifecycle and options These methods let you perform some meta-operations on the extension, and display the options page to the extension user. Methods in this category include getBackgroundPage, getManifest, getPackageDirectoryEntry, and getPlatformInfo. Accessing extension and platform metadata These methods let you retrieve several specific pieces of metadata about the extension and the platform. Methods in this category include connect, connectNative, sendMessage, and sendNativeMessage. See Message Passing for an overview of the subject.
The runtime API provides methods to support a number of areas of functionality that your extensions can use: Message passing These methods support message passing so that you can communicate with different parts of your extension (such as an extension popup and background scripts), other extensions, or native applications on the user's device.
