sessionStorage and localStorage not working in Internet Explorer 10

I stumbled over an interesting issue when testing the web storage support in Internet Explorer 10 (localStorage and sessionStorage).

Basically, when loading an HTML document from the local drive without using a web server (file:// protocol), these features are not working in Internet Explorer 10.

When you run the following code in Internet Explorer 10:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title>Web storage test</title>
</head>
<body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        if (window.sessionStorage) {
            alert("We have session storage!");
        }

        if (window.localStorage) {
            alert("We have local storage!");
        }
    </script>
</body>
</html>

It will display the alerts only when running from a web server (local or remote) using the http(s):// protocol. When trying to open the file locally without a server, window.localStorage and window.sessionStorage will be unavailable and the alerts will not show.

If you are looking for alternatives, take a look at this stackoverflow post which lists a handfull:
HTML5 Local Storage fallback solutions

Hope this helps someone stumbling upon this issue.

A quick test with current versions of Firefox and Chrome, showed that these browsers do not share this problem.

Tags: Internet Explorer, localStorage, sessionStorage, Web Storage

This entry was posted on November 23, 2013 at 12:10 am and is filed under HTML5. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “sessionStorage and localStorage not working in Internet Explorer 10”

none Says:
February 5, 2018 at 6:21 pm | Reply
Thank you. I stumbled on this same thing. If I run it from the LAN (one machine to another), then it works.
Maria Harper Says:
September 25, 2019 at 2:41 am | Reply
The crux of your writing whilst sounding reasonable at first, did not settle very well with me after some time. Somewhere within the paragraphs you were able to make me a believer but only for a very short while. I however have a problem with your leaps in assumptions and one would do well to help fill in all those breaks. When you can accomplish that, I could certainly be amazed.

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