1878147 - Lost ability to locate tab(s) sharing camera or microphone from permission dropdown in macOS menu bar

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Site Permissions, defect, P3)

Description

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

Attachment: The Firefox permission dropdown in macOS (now gone)

The Firefox permission dropdowns in the macOS menu bar (see attached image) that appeared on camera and microphone access respectively is gone, as is the functionality they provided:

1. They would list all tabs sharing camera or microphone
2. Users could click on "Control Sharing" to jump to the tab sharing camera or microphone.

This functionality is now lost (only on macOS).

I dunno about others but I used this all the time to quickly get back to a live meeting tab so I could mute or unmute camera or microphone.

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

This capability was disabled intentionally in bug 1857254 to avoid the redundant camera icon in the macOS menu bar. It can be re-enabled by setting privacy.webrtc.showIndicatorsOnMacos14AndAbove to true.

If there are serious concerns with the default behaviour, we can perhaps discuss that here.

Comment 2

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

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1857254

:hsohaney, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1857254, could you take a look? Also, could you set the severity field?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney]]

I wouldn't say this bug is a defect, this is intended behaviour. The camera icon was taken out for macos 14 and above because of the new macos update, which included new icons from apple. Users can re-enable the icon using the privacy.webrtc.showIndicatorsOnMacos14AndAbove flag as Mike stated.

Happy to discuss this further!

Comment 4

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

Just making sure bug 1857254 comment 7 is not forgotten. The icons may have looked the same but offered entirely different functionality.

Comment 5

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Hey pbz, do you have thoughts here? Should the disabling of the camera in the menubar be blocked on bug 1857254 comment 7?

Comment 6

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

I wasn't aware that the menu could be used to quickly jump to tabs. That's additional functionality we shouldn't just disable. Let's bring it back via pref flip until we have a better solution. Using a Firefox icon instead of a duplicated device indicator would already be an improvement.
Harshit, could you please create a patch setting the pref to true and tag me for review?

Comment 7

[Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney]]

Attachment: Bug 1878147 - Flip pref to allow users to see sharing webrtc icons in MacOS 14 and above. r?pbz

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/69e7051ac56f
Flip pref to allow users to see sharing webrtc icons in MacOS 14 and above. r=pbz

Comment 9

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/69e7051ac56f

Comment 10

[Alexandru Trif, Desktop Test Engineering [:atrif]]

Reproduced the issue with Firefox 124.0a1 (2024-02-01) on macOS 14.4. The privacy.webrtc.showIndicatorsOnMacos14AndAbove pref is set to false and the sharing camera or microphone from the permission dropdown in the macOS menu bar icons are not displayed.
The issue is verified fixed with Firefox 124.0 on macOS 14.4. The privacy.webrtc.showIndicatorsOnMacos14AndAbove pref is set to true and the sharing camera and/ or microphone from the permission dropdown in the macOS menu bar icons are displayed.