Re: Intent to Prototype: Capability delegation for pop-ups

[Dan Murphy]

In response to some good feedback, this has been updated to no longer spec anything user-interaction-y with the service worker global scope, as it's not a thing there, and do everything in terms of the delegated capability definitions.

On Monday, August 3, 2026 at 3:47:23 PM UTC-7 Chromestatus wrote:

Contact emails

dmu...@google.com

Explainer

https://github.com/dmurph/capability-delegation/blob/main/explainers/popup-delegation.md

Specification

No information provided

Summary

Allows Service Workers to delegate their transient user activation (acquired from a user interaction like a notification click) to same-origin client windows. This enables client windows to open child (pop-up) windows, such as email previews or chat windows, without being blocked by the popup blocker. This allows developers to take advantage of frame state-sharing performance, instead of requiring a new top level browsing context (which is what Clients.openWindow does). This also allows 'popup' delegation from one frame to another, making things like 3rd-party auth and payment easier.

Blink component

UI>Notifications

Web Feature ID

Missing feature

Motivation

Partners have directly asked for this feature to allow notifications to not require a full page load from a client if they want to show a popup preview window. Example: Click on an email notification, and an email client should be able to open a lightweight auxiliary (popup) window with the email contents.

Initial public proposal

https://github.com/WICG/capability-delegation/issues/42

Search tags

capability delegation, popup, notification, pop-up

Goals for experimentation

None

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/542314185

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5091965583622144?gate=5129521448747008

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.