1702290 - Camera Permission Propagation in Private Window

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect, P2)

Description

[Rares Vernica]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:87.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/87.0

Steps to reproduce:

I use Google Meet in Private mode. When using the Camera, Google Meet ask for permission. I want to skip this prompt.

In regular (non-private) mode, I added meet.google.com to Settings - Camera Permissions and set permission to Allow. This permission propagated to Private mode and the camera worked in Google Meet without getting the permission prompt.

Starting Firefox 87.0 this permission no longer propagates in Private mode.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Site Permissions' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Paul Zühlcke [:pbz]]

Thanks for filing a bug!
This is caused by Bug 1680237 which enables isolated permissions between normal and private browsing windows.
I'm working on a fix for Bug 1701814 which should also fix the issue for other permissions like camera. The idea is to apply permissions set via about:preferences for both normal and private browsing windows.

Comment 3

[Paul Zühlcke [:pbz]]

I've discussed this bug with :johannh. We came to the conclusion that the issue you're describing is expected behavior, now that the permissions are isolated. We consider being prompted again in private browsing a privacy feature. Private browsing permissions should not persist, but only be valid for the duration of the session.
For Bug 1589608 we would like to show the private browsing permissions in the permission lists so users can update the state (allow,block,...) or revoke them. However, PB permissions should remain session-only.