setInterval Timer alternatives

[joette cordsen]

Much has been written about this but a lot of it is old, so it may no longer be relevant. I have a content script that runs a countdown timer.  When the timer is running the countdown is displayed in the tab header and when the time is up a sound is played. The interval is 1 second.  Since moving to manifest V3 I have heard from more users about the timer stopping or being unreliable when the tab is not in focus. I understand that is because of throttling on timers for unfocused tabs. I have thought about having a service worker keep time for the tab, but I have also read that maybe timers are throttled in service workers? What is the current thinking on this in terms of the best way to get the timer in a tab that is not in focus to keep running?.  It doesn't happen all the time,  and happens more for users that are doing other intensive processing on their computer. There is a flag  "Throttle non-visible cross-origin iframes" that I disabled, that does make a difference, but not 100% of the time. The reality is, even if it worked 100% of the time, I can't expect my users to all disable it. Any suggestions? 

TIA.

[wOxxOm]

1. Throttling of timers in web pages is not MV3-specific.

2. Timers in the extension service worker are not throttled but you'll have to force the script to stay alive for the duration of the countdown.

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi joette,

Thanks for the question!

I forget if it directly covers this problem but you might be interested in this video from a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCi6AZMkxcU&pp=ygUOdGltZXJzIGh0dHAyMDM%3D

To keep the service worker alive, you could open a long-lived message port with `chrome.runtime.connect`. If you send a message across this channel every second the service worker shouldn't be terminated, since that resets the idle timer.

Hope that helps,

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

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[wOxxOm]

+1, using port is the best keep-alive method here.