Intent to prototype and ship: User Activation API

[Oliver Medhurst]

As of today (Firefox 120), I intend to turn on the User Activation API by default on all platforms. It has not been developed behind a flag, rather being enabled by default in the implementation patch as it is a low-risk feature. No other browsers ship or implement the feature at this time.

Summary:

The User Activation API allows websites to check if the page is activated by the user or has been active in the past, activated through user interaction (click, keypress, etc). Sites can use this to only request permissions, autoplay videos, and more only if the user is active or has been previously. It is exposed via the navigator.userActivation interface.

Bug: https://bugzil.la/1791079
Specification: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#the-useractivation-interface
Standards body: WHATWG (HTML)
Platform coverage: All

Preference: None
DevTools bug: None
Standards position: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/838

Other browsers:
- Blink: Shipped since Chrome 72
- WebKit: Shipped since Safari 16.4

Web platform tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/html/user-activation

[Oliver Medhurst]

To correct the first paragraph, Blink and WebKit do already ship this (see other browsers section at the bottom for correct information). Apologies.

[Mustaq Ahmed]

Great news, thanks!

And this is just in time to promote User Activation as a priority for Interop 2024: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop/issues/428.