1378096 - Push API in Extensions (PushManager.subscribe), gated on "notifications" permission

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[joaomgcd]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.50 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Developed an extension and wanted to add support for receiving push messages in it using the Push API.


Actual results:

The Push API needs service workers which aren't supported in Extensions.


Expected results:

I should be able to receive push messages in Extensions.

Comment 1

[Caitlin Neiman [:caitmuenster]]

Hi joamgcd, this has been added to the agenda for the July 25 WebExtensions APIs triage. Would you be able to join us? 

Wiki: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Contribute/Triage#Next_Meeting

Agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BBIZhiHG1zlQiu6744jiAYyWJLa-B0iRu9vzWypkvF4/edit#heading=h.lx9xov4c2jf0

Comment 2

[joaomgcd]

Unfortunately I won't be available today at that time, but I'm happy to give some feedback if needed at a different time. Thanks in advance!

Comment 3

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

We've discussed about this during the last week WebExtensions APIs triage, and we agreed that the first step is investigating the status of the ServiceWorker in a WebExtensions (e.g. how it should work), if allowing a ServiceWorker from inside a WebExtensions is not feasible, then we will evaluate how to expose the Push API to a WebExtension without the ServiceWorker (e.g. through a new WE API).

Marking this as investigate in the whiteboard (and needinfo assigned to me).

Comment 4

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

seems removing ni? was not intentional.

Comment 5

[winne4r]

Any progress on this issue? It`s really important feature...

Comment 6

[dennyhz]

I hope Firefox is able to allow this plugin to work. It is very useful and is currently the only thing keeping me away from Firefox

Comment 7

[Emile Pesik]

This is the one single thing that prevents me to switch from Chromium to Firefox. I use joaocmd's Join app several times a week, and this ties me to Chromium. Very frustrating.

Comment 8

[mitchdahl]

Any update yet? Like others here, this is causing the one extension I can't do without to not work.

Comment 9

[Emile Pesik]

Not receiving any responses whatsoever is one of the most frustrating things about dealing with major organisations on the internet. It leaves users feeling ignored, which in turn leads to them searching for alternatives.

One of the reasons I'm abandoning Google is the fact that they simply do not listen to their users. Basic features like bulk processing emails in the mobile client, or copy and paste functionality in the calendar have been requested for over a decade, but instead we've only received countless UI refreshes and crowd pleaser features.

I'd much rather have Mozilla state that they will never implement this, than leaving an issues like this open for years without any (meaningful) feedback.

Please don't become like Google, Mozilla, we're running out of options to turn to…

Comment 10

[Philipp Preißer-Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

Hello Folks,

I'd like to give you an update about this issue. While I can't offer a concrete timeline for support, I do believe there is value in providing push notifications support in WebExtensions. The mechanism to do so would indeed be service workers, I'd like to avoid specific WebExtension APIs that have an equivalent Web API.

There are a few dependencies to making that happen that I don't yet have a bug number for, I will add dependencies when the time comes.

In the meanwhile, I'm restricting comments since this bug has attracted various advocacy comments. I'd like to reserve this bug for technical discussions on making this happen. You are welcome to discuss the merits on https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/add-ons/development if necessary.

Comment 11

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

Added Bug 1573659 ([meta] Background Service Worker for Manifest v3) as a blocker for this issue.

Comment 12

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

FWIW, Chrome 121+ has support for the push API with the "notifications" permission, allowing it to be used without showing a notification.
For more info, see:

• https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/208#issuecomment-1804184054
• https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/how-to/integrate/web-push

In Firefox it is not possible to have service workers in extensions yet, so the functionality cannot be used yet.
Not really a new issue, but I am also linking bug 1993805 for relevance: notifications do not clearly show which extension is triggering a notification.