Intent to Ship: WebXR Plane Detection

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

alco...@chromium.org

Specification

https://immersive-web.github.io/plane-detection

Summary

The WebXR Plane Detection API allows sites to retrieve the set of planes detected in the user's environment. This is both less work for developers and more powerful than using the depth-sensing WebXR feature as planes such as walls that are occluded by objects can still be fully represented if the system is aware of the boundaries of the wall. (Whereas a depth map would show the wall, but it would be broken up by any objects in front of the wall, potentially obscuring the full scope of the wall). Further, semantic labeling information is exposed where the device is aware of such labels and they fit into predefined categories, allowing better knowledge about the world.

Blink component

Blink>WebXR

Web Feature ID

Missing feature

Motivation

No information provided

Initial public proposal

No information provided

TAG review

No information provided

TAG review status

Issues addressed

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

No information provided

Gecko: Defer (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1346) Presumptive Defer due to that being the state of all other WebXR positions due to current lack of support/development.

WebKit: No signal (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/608)

Web developers: Positive

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

No information provided

Debuggability

No information provided

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No
WebXR itself is only support on Android and Windows, and not on Android WebView. This will be supported on all platforms, but primary usage is expected to be on Android.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes
https://wpt.fyi/results/webxr/plane-detection?label=experimental&label=master&aligned Infrastructure issues exist on wpt.fyi, but tests do pass within Chromium CQ

Flag name on about://flags

webxr-plane-detection

Finch feature name

WebXRPlaneDetection

Rollout plan

Will ship enabled for all users

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://crbug.com/394636076

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop	147
Shipping on Android	147

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).

No information provided

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5177993049800704?gate=6532572282748928

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Daniel Bratell]

Is this explainer up to date?

https://github.com/immersive-web/plane-detection/blob/main/explainer.md

/Daniel

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[Dan Clark]

Looks like the TAG reviewed this back in 2021: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/620

Can you update the Chromestatus entry to include the review?

Has anything significant changed with the feature since then?

-- Dan

[Alex Russell]

LGTM1, assuming other questions are answered.

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[Vladimir Levin]

Hey, just a question about privacy: am I correct in assuming that this would provide additional information about the user's environment to the site? Presumably given this API, the site would be able to construct a loose representation of the user's room/house. Is this new information or is this already available to the site via other APIs? I think this is gated behind a permission, but I wonder whether the implications of this are captured in the permission text for the user to understand.

Thanks!

Vlad

[Alex Cooper]

> Is this explainer up to date?

For all intents and purposes yes. There's maybe a couple of minor additions from the spec that could be added to the explainer, but I don't think anything represents a critical lack in the explainer or anything like that.

> Looks like the TAG reviewed this back in 2021: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/620

> Can you update the Chromestatus entry to include the review?

> Has anything significant changed with the feature since then?

I've asked this question before and never gotten a satisfactory answer, but the chromestatus tool does not seem to have a spot to put a TAG review entry, just the questions regarding it. It looks like there have been minor additions, namely the `semanticLabel` attribute as well as the `initiateRoomCapture` method. It is worth noting however that these features are also launched in the Meta Quest browser already, so I think it unlikely that any TAG feedback would reasonably be able to be addressed without breaking existing experiences.

> Hey, just a question about privacy: am I correct in assuming that this would provide additional information about the user's environment to the site? Presumably given this API, the site would be able to construct a loose representation of the user's room/house. Is this new information or is this already available to the site via other APIs? I think this is gated behind a permission, but I wonder whether the implications of this are captured in the permission text for the user to understand.

The privacy team has approved this launch and previously reviewed the permission that this is under. As noted on the Privacy gate on the Chromestatus entry, similar data is exposed by both the hit-test and depth-sensing WebXR APIs, all of which require the same permission prompt.

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[Vladimir Levin]

On Wednesday, February 11, 2026 at 12:46:47 PM UTC-5 Alexander Cooper wrote:

> Is this explainer up to date?

For all intents and purposes yes. There's maybe a couple of minor additions from the spec that could be added to the explainer, but I don't think anything represents a critical lack in the explainer or anything like that.

> Looks like the TAG reviewed this back in 2021: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/620

> Can you update the Chromestatus entry to include the review?

> Has anything significant changed with the feature since then?

I've asked this question before and never gotten a satisfactory answer, but the chromestatus tool does not seem to have a spot to put a TAG review entry, just the questions regarding it. It looks like there have been minor additions, namely the `semanticLabel` attribute as well as the `initiateRoomCapture` method. It is worth noting however that these features are also launched in the Meta Quest browser already, so I think it unlikely that any TAG feedback would reasonably be able to be addressed without breaking existing experiences.

> Hey, just a question about privacy: am I correct in assuming that this would provide additional information about the user's environment to the site? Presumably given this API, the site would be able to construct a loose representation of the user's room/house. Is this new information or is this already available to the site via other APIs? I think this is gated behind a permission, but I wonder whether the implications of this are captured in the permission text for the user to understand.

The privacy team has approved this launch and previously reviewed the permission that this is under. As noted on the Privacy gate on the Chromestatus entry, similar data is exposed by both the hit-test and depth-sensing WebXR APIs, all of which require the same permission prompt.

That great! Do you know what the permission text says? Or do you know where I might find that?

Thanks,

Vlad

 

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[Alex Cooper]

> That great! Do you know what the permission text says? Or do you know where I might find that?

The feature is currently only available in AR, the text is here: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:components/permissions_strings.grdp;drc=69a52d206707526e6493c093d618f8778e9ddef0;l=24, and has been discussed extensively with the privacy team regarding exactly these types of data. 

[Vladimir Levin]

Great, that text clearly covers capabilities exposed by this API. 

LGTM2

Thanks,

Vlad

[Chris Harrelson]

LGTM3

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