New issue
Advanced search Search tips
Note: Color blocks (like or ) mean that a user may not be available. Tooltip shows the reason.

Issue 771534 link

Starred by 2 users

Issue metadata

Status: Assigned
Owner:
Cc:
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: ----
Pri: 3
Type: Feature



Sign in to add a comment

Allow developers to unmute microphone input

Project Member Reported by huib@chromium.org, Oct 4 2017

Issue description

Web developers can determine whether a MediaStreamTrack corresponding to microphone input has been muted, but can do little more than instructing users to unmute their microphone. 
As volume settings are typically buried in system settings and difficult to get to, this easily leads to user frustration. We should be more helpful in this situation, yet for be careful to not allow webpages to unmute their microphone without consent for privacy reasons.
Possible improvements
1) Add an API to unmute microphone input. User consent can be assumed by
- Require a click in combination with a headsup message, similar to requestFullscreen()
- A permission prompt, similar to getUserMedia()
- Restricting usage to extensions only (not preferred)
2) Add the possibility to open the system mixer. This needs to require a click to avoid spamming, and needs to have some security considerations.

 

Comment 1 by huib@chromium.org, Oct 4 2017

Cc: foolip@chromium.org

Comment 2 by olka@chromium.org, Oct 4 2017

Cc: olka@chromium.org maxmorin@chromium.org
Owner: solenberg@chromium.org
Status: Available (was: Untriaged)
Status: Assigned (was: Available)
Owner: hta@chromium.org
Harald, WDYT?

Comment 6 by guidou@chromium.org, Oct 16 2017

Harald, is this something that can be implemented by adding support to the "volume" constrainable property?

Comment 7 by hta@google.com, Oct 16 2017

There are two scenarios:

- The user wants his microphone to be muted, and doesn't trust the app. In that case, giving the app control over the muting is the Wrong Thing; it breaks the security model.

- The user wants his microphone to be muted, and trusts the app. In that case, the app can do the muting - including providing the "mute" button, and it can use the "enabled=false" property to achieve the effect.

Short summary: If the user trusts the app, use "enabled". If the user doesn't trust the app, don't try to work around him.

Comment 8 by hta@google.com, Oct 16 2017

Reading the initial post again: Seems to me that having a mechanism for Javascript to ask for platform (browser) controls to be shown to the user (similar to opening a file upload dialog) makes a lot of sense. Users are probably familiar with platform volume controls, they just have a hard time finding them.

Comment 9 by huib@chromium.org, Oct 17 2017

The scenario we want to improve is that users mute themselves at OS level (possibly by hitting a hardware mute button on external device) during call and unintentionally are still muted in the next call. The app is not just the browser for the end-user, but the whole setup including OS and hardware interface.
Cc: -foolip@chromium.org

Sign in to add a comment