Start Tab Cature Without Extension Click

[Arpit Singhal]

Hi, I am building an extension that records user's tab audio+ microphone.
My current process, I have a sidepanel with a button "Record". I have to click that and then  press extension icon to start TabCapture.

Is there any other way to capture tab (without getdisplaymedia). just by clicking the "Record" button in my sidepanel?

[Mythical 5th]

As a guess, I'd say that you are not declaring the activeTab permission in the manifest. The permission is granted on a page-by-page basis when the icon is clicked, but if you need access to the tab otherwise, you need to declare the permission.

[Arpit Singhal]

I have activetabs permission in manifest.json

[Mythical 5th]

Sorry, I got that wrong, it looks like you need the tabs permission. Per the docs, "activeTab grants an extension temporary host permission for the current tab in response to a user invocation."

The invocation is presumably a click on the toolbar button rather than on a button in a page. I actually opened an issue a while back for something similar: when a popup is opened by a button click calling "action.openPopup()", it cannot read the active tab's url, which shows that the activeTab permission has not been granted for that tab. When the popup is opened via the toolbar button, it works properly. https://issues.chromium.org/issues/399391539