Intent to Ship: Approximate geolocation

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

mattre...@google.com, antonio...@google.com, alv...@google.com, t...@google.com

Explainer

https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/approximate-geolocation/blob/main/README.md

Specification

https://github.com/w3c/geolocation/pull/233

Summary

This feature extends the Geolocation API to enable sites to request approximate location data only. In particular, a new parameter accuracyMode (either "precise" or "approximate", defaults to "precise" for backwards compatibility) can be specified in PositionOptions.

Blink component

Blink>Geolocation

Web Feature ID

geolocation

Motivation

Websites using the Geolocation API can often function properly with an approximate estimate of the user's position. This change enables websites to signal that to the user agent by requesting approximate location only, enhancing the user privacy without loss of functionality. See https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/approximate-geolocation for more context.

Initial public proposal

https://github.com/w3c/geolocation/issues/182

Search tags

location, approximate, precise, geolocation, coarse

TAG review

https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1131

TAG review status

Issues addressed

Goals for experimentation

None

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

No information provided

Gecko: Under consideration (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1193)

WebKit: Support (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/470)

Web developers: No signals

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)?

Yes
For now, this will be supported on Android only. Implementation on Desktop is still ongoing and will follow.

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

No
The feature is not yet fully tested in WPTs because of missing infrastructural support. Implementing tests will require additions to WebDriver BIDI in order to overwrite approximate and precise location separately. See https://crbug.com/513467850

Flag name on about://flags

No information provided

Finch feature name

ApproximateGeolocationWebVisibleAPI

Rollout plan

Will ship enabled for all users

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/u/1/issues/495852854

Launch bug

https://launch.corp.google.com/launch/4474199

Availability expectation

Feature is available only in Chromium browsers for the foreseeable future.

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop	155
Shipping on Android	153

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/5143609755828224?gate=5129930553425920

Links to previous Intent discussions

Intent to Prototype: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAHdTo6ocBp%2BYSLs%3D7-w9%3Dbizb6G2azmpUVUyWy5yRndTR8LBiA%40mail.gmail.com

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Kagami Rosylight]

>  Gecko: Under consideration (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1193) 

Correction: The issue does not have "under conderation" label, and we stopped using that. Please treat it as No Signal instead.

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

The intent doesn't mention Android WebView explicitly - from other discussions I believe it's the case that this is *not* currently being enabled in WebView as we don't have a way to expose this new permission to the host app, but it would be good to be explicit.

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[Matt Reynolds]

Thanks, I've updated https://chromestatus.com/feature/5143609755828224 to set Firefox's views as "No Signal".

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[Alex Russell]

LGTM1

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[Dan Clark]

LGTM2

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[Mike Taylor]

LGTM3

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