1863829 - Not showing all the permissions of an add-on during installation

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android :: WebExtensions, enhancement, P3)

Description

[eclaudiu64]

Attachment: Screenshot_20231109-001556_Firefox Nightly.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android 11; Mobile; rv:120.0) Gecko/120.0 Firefox/120.0

Steps to reproduce:

Add-on installation: YouTube High Definition ( https://addons.mozilla.org/ro/android/addon/youtube-high-definition/ )

Actual results:

During installation, add-on permissions are not shown.

Expected results:

Show all add-on permissions in the foreground while the installation message appears.

Comment 1

[eclaudiu64]

Attachment: Screenshot_20231110-074405_Firefox Nightly.jpg

Some add-ons are partially missing permission information. For example this add-on shows 3 permissions in the table, but when you enter the add-on page there are 4 permissions.

Comment 2

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Unlike MV2, host permissions of MV3 extensions are currently opt-in (bug 1839129). While desktop has builtiin UI to control these, Firefox for Android does not (bug 1811563).

Comment 3

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Note that for Youtube High Definition, Firefox for desktop behaves just like Firefox for Android (i.e. no permission is listed in the permission prompt). As Rob wrote above, we'll add controls for (optional) permissions in the fenix manager. Therefore, I am not sure this bug is actionable.

Comment 4

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

:eclaudiu64 is this bug still valid?

Comment 5

[eclaudiu64]

(In reply to William Durand [:willdurand] from comment #4)

:eclaudiu64 is this bug still valid?

I see permission from: This add-on needs, fixed. But the section permissions: This add-on may request and or other sections ... is missing when installing an extension.

Comment 6

[eclaudiu64]

Attachment: mobizen_20240714_023130.mp4

(In reply to eclaudiu64 from comment #5)

(In reply to William Durand [:willdurand] from comment #4)

:eclaudiu64 is this bug still valid?

I see permission from: This add-on needs, fixed. But the section permissions: This add-on may request and or other sections ... is missing when installing an extension.

It's also noticeable with the Youtube High Definition extension, but I noticed it the most with this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/code-editor , this extension only has the section: This add-on may also ask to..

Comment 7

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Oh I see, yeah. I don't think we are surfacing the optional permissions in the install flow, though. Only required permissions are listed, on both Desktop and Android.

:eclaudiu64 are you asking for all permissions to be listed? In which case, that wouldn't be a defect but an enhancement (though we'd need to ask Product/UX/etc.)

Comment 8

[eclaudiu64]

Attachment: mobizen_20240715_223706.mp4

(In reply to William Durand [:willdurand] from comment #7)

:eclaudiu64 are you asking for all permissions to be listed? In which case, that wouldn't be a defect but an enhancement (though we'd need to ask Product/UX/etc.)

Yes, I request this improvement, the optional permissions would also be necessary, in order to inform the user fully what permissions can be applied to an add-on. Maybe you can add a bug for this improvement.

Can you look at this too? It contains about the same error. I am adding missing permissions to an extension that I noticed today, this is the extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-download-hd-download/ , but to be installed on the phone, you will have to put it in Desktop mode, it is missing some permissions during installation, such as: Exchange messages with programs other than Firefox and Access browsing history. There are probably other different permissions that are missing in other extensions.

Comment 9

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Alright, sorry for the lag. We've been discussing permissions at install time recently, and UX isn't in favor of adding too many permissions, especially optional ones. Our user research shows that users tend to better understand when there is less permission listed in the install prompt. We've updated the prompt recently to include all origins (that are granted by default).

Comment 10

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Can you look at this too? It contains about the same error. I am adding missing permissions to an extension that I noticed today, this is the extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-download-hd-download/ , but to be installed on the phone, you will have to put it in Desktop mode, it is missing some permissions during installation, such as: Exchange messages with programs other than Firefox and Access browsing history. There are probably other different permissions that are missing in other extensions.

Looks like the add-on is not longer listed but this description looks related to nativeMessaging, which isn't supported in Firefox for Android. That's why it isn't listed in the install prompt, because not supported means extensions cannot use it at all, it's like the API doesn't exist.