1609254 - Deprecate navigator.mozGetUserMedia()

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: WebRTC: Audio/Video, task, P5)

Description

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

(This is something we have no short-term plan for doing, so this is bookkeeping.)

Like Safari, we decided against ever implementing navigator.getUserMedia, the spec's legacy api—We want to help drive convergence around the modern promise-based navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia instead.

Instead, our legacy answer is keep navigator.mozGetUserMedia around until usage drops (it may never drop, perhaps due to trackers which tend to prefer conservative patterns for broadest reach).

Updated numbers (still beta due to bug 1517018): 9.5% (74851/788853) of gum calls are callback-based, down from 21% in bug 1279936 comment 5 from bug 1528031.

• navigator.mozGetUserMedia: 0.002% vs.
• navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia: 0.026%

Chromestatus says 9.3% of gUM calls are callback-based still (0.005277/0.056918), so that seems about right.

Comment 1

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

Progress on this bug would rely on getting the usage number down. Improved telemetry to discount failing getUserMedia calls may help weed out trackers using the API for fingerprinting.

Comment 2

[Mathew Hodson]

This has Deprecated="NavigatorGetUserMedia" in Navigator.webidl

What do the use counters look like now?

Comment 4

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

This should be documented in the related browser compat data.

Sebastian

Comment 5

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

(In reply to comment #0)

• navigator.mozGetUserMedia: 0.002% vs.
• navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia: 0.026%

Updated numbers:

• navigator.mozGetUserMedia: 0.00259% vs.
• navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia: 0.0642%

Chromestatus says 9.3% of gUM calls are callback-based still (0.005277/0.056918), so that seems about right.

Chromestatus now says only 3.2% of gUM calls are callback-based (0.005935/0.184198).

But we see this is because promise-based gUM usage has trippled over the last 4 years whereas callback usage has stayed the same.

Comment 6

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

A blocker here is https://github.com/webrtcHacks/adapter/issues/1156

Comment 7

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Attachment: Bug 1609254 - Put navigator.mozGetUserMedia() behind a pref, r?jib

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/99d14ab0e48c
Put navigator.mozGetUserMedia() behind a pref, r=jib,webidl,smaug

Comment 9

[amarc]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/99d14ab0e48c

Comment 10

[Hamish Willee]

FF138 docs for this are tracked in https://github.com/mdn/content/issues/38883

However I don't think there is anything to do. The associated method navigator.getUserMedia() is already marked as deprecated. Since this adds the pref but sets it true, there is no visible change to external developers.