1619251 - [meta] Clipboard API improvements

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: Copy & Paste and Drag & Drop, task)

Description

[Tom S [:evilpie]]

Right now Firefox only supports Clipboard.writeText and Clipboard.readText and only for WebExtensions. Chrome already supports write/read with images.

Comment 1

[Tom S [:evilpie]]

Seems like Safari 13.1 just shipped with this API as well: https://webkit.org/blog/10247/new-webkit-features-in-safari-13-1/

Comment 2

[Thayne]

According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard_API, firefox is the only modern browser that doesn't have this. Is there any progress on this?

Comment 4

[Jukka Jylänki]

Stumbled on to this, while noticing that Safari and Chrome do implement Clipboard API, but Firefox

a) requires enabling a pref dom.events.asyncClipboard.readText, and
b) after that pref has been enabled, which exposes navigator.clipboard.readText() function, calling that function will cause an ad hoc popup dialog "Paste" to appear on the page that the user needs to click.

In Chrome, access to Clipboard is managed via the Permissions API. I wonder if Firefox has intent to implement same UX at some point? Or are there some qualms about using Permissions API for this purpose? (In particular, Permissions API is a one-off request for the lifetime of the site, whereas Firefox's current ad hoc popup appears on every paste operation)

Comment 5

[Hsin-Yi Tsai (she/her) [:hsinyi]]

(In reply to Jukka Jylänki from comment #4)

Stumbled on to this, while noticing that Safari and Chrome do implement Clipboard API, but Firefox

a) requires enabling a pref dom.events.asyncClipboard.readText, and
b) after that pref has been enabled, which exposes navigator.clipboard.readText() function, calling that function will cause an ad hoc popup dialog "Paste" to appear on the page that the user needs to click.

In Chrome, access to Clipboard is managed via the Permissions API. I wonder if Firefox has intent to implement same UX at some point? Or are there some qualms about using Permissions API for this purpose? (In particular, Permissions API is a one-off request for the lifetime of the site, whereas Firefox's current ad hoc popup appears on every paste operation)

No, we don't plan to implement same UX as Chrome. Our approach is similar to Safari's, here is our intent to prototype. We are currently working on bug 1777448 to avoid button popup when user's privacy isn't affected.