Any possible way to exit --kiosk mode from JS apis on Windows

[Davis Ford]

Hi Chromium Dev team,

We have an app we launch in Kiosk mode and our platform is primarily Windows.  We use touchscreen terminals for this, and there is no keyboard available.  There are times when we need to exit kiosk mode (for support / debug issues), but we haven't been successful in finding an avenue to do so outside of a hard reset of the whole touchscreen terminal.  Is there any way we can force Chrome to exit kiosk mode with a JavaScript API?

If we have to build an extension and do it that way, we could do that as well...just wondering if someone might be able to confirm.

Thanks!

[Peter Kasting]

There is no current way to do this, and I suspect we would be reluctant to add such an API, especially given that --kiosk is "maintenance-only" (I'm the only person standing in the way of it being removed entirely).

PK 

[Lei Zhang]

You can try chrome.windows.remove() with an extension and see if it
will let you close the last window.
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/windows#method-remove

BTW, --kiosk-print is in a similar state as --kiosk, so if anyone is
wondering why non-ChromeOS kiosk mode bugs aren't getting that much
attention...

OTOH, there exists ChromeOS kiosk mode and I believe that is an
officially supported thing.
https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3134673?hl=en

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 4:38 PM, Davis Ford <davi...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Davis Ford]

Thank you Peter for the quick response...

Follow up question: do you happen to know if the extended APIs via Chrome Extensions (which obviously have access to do more than a standard DOM page) would be able to accomplish this?

[Davis Ford]

Thank you Lei,

I might as well try to ask while I have the decision makers attention for a few seconds: do you think you'll kill --kiosk in the near future?  It will affect our business, so I'd just love to have a heads up and try to start working on a workaround.  

[Peter Kasting]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 4:51 PM, Davis Ford <davi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Follow up question: do you happen to know if the extended APIs via Chrome Extensions (which obviously have access to do more than a standard DOM page) would be able to accomplish this?

I doubt it.  --kiosk is wired in at a fairly low level.  You'd basically need to restart the browser in non-Kiosk mode.

PK 

[Peter Kasting]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Davis Ford <davi...@gmail.com> wrote:

I might as well try to ask while I have the decision makers attention for a few seconds: do you think you'll kill --kiosk in the near future?  It will affect our business, so I'd just love to have a heads up and try to start working on a workaround.  

There are no plans to kill --kiosk right now.

PK 

[Davis Ford]

we just tested an extension that claims to do so, and it worked for us in a windows VM.  i just don't want to spend the time using the solution if it'll get killed in the near future.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/close-kiosk/dfbjahmenldfpkokepmfmkjkhdjelmkb?hl=en

[Peter Kasting]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Davis Ford <davi...@gmail.com> wrote:

we just tested an extension that claims to do so, and it worked for us in a windows VM.  i just don't want to spend the time using the solution if it'll get killed in the near future.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/close-kiosk/dfbjahmenldfpkokepmfmkjkhdjelmkb?hl=en

That extension won't get broken regardless, because it just closes windows that you tag as such.  Closing windows is an extension API we won't remove :)

The basic idea behind it is the same as what I was suggesting: to get out of Kiosk mode, you need to quit the browser (and, optionally, restart it in non-Kiosk mode).

PK

[Davis Ford]

Thanks a lot Peter + Lei for the quick and informative responses.  The Chrome team really shines in this dept.  :)