989086 - Web App permission granted/denied settings (and other app state) are preserved across uninstall/install cycle, with no obvious way how to clear them

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Web Apps (PWAs), defect, P1)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:
 0. Visit https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/mapp in Firefox Nightly for Android
 1. Tap "Install"
 2. Launch the Mapp app, using e.g. the Open button when the install completes.
 3. Tap the arrow button in lower-right of map to open menu.
 4. Tap the "my location" button at left of menu
   --> Location Permission dialog appears
 5. *Deny* the permission request. ("by accident" let's say)
  ( Note that the "remember" box is checked by default)

Now, try to ever locate yourself in that app, ever again. Including uninstall/reinstall. Not possible as far as I can tell -- the permission change persists across a reinstall.


Just to be explicit, here are my STR for reinstall:
 6. Use the Android app-uninstall UI. (On my nexus 4, I drag-and-drop the app icon to a trashcan that appears when I long-press it in my app list.)

 7. Repeat STR steps 1 through 4. No permission dialog will appear; instead, the app pops up an alert saying "geolocation error"


(One other fun fact: when you re-launch the app after a reinstall, the rendering is the same as when you last ran it, pre-uninstalling it (e.g. the menu was already open, in my case). That seems a bit odd/undesirable...)

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

NOTE: I checked the Android Settings | Apps page for Mapp. This page has a "Clear data" and "Clear cache" button, which I'd expect might be the UI to manage this.

However, the "Clear data" button is grayed out, and "Clear cache" appears to have no effect. (The Cache value above the button, 12.00 KB, doesn't change, and the app's behavior doesn't seem to change in any meaningful way.)

Comment 2

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

Bug 933979 is about cleaning up these profiles and will probably help/fix this in the uninstall case. Hooking up the app profile to the clearData/clearCache buttons is probably going to be technically tricky (but would be really nice...)

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I don't personally care what the UI is, FWIW - there just needs to be *some* discoverable way to make a geolocation-dependent app work after you've accidentally fatfingered the "Deny" button.

Right now, it seems like that kind of mistake just dooms you to never ever be able to use the app. (perhaps clearing your Firefox app's data might fix things (?) but that seems a bit extreme)

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(If it matters: I'm using up-to-date Firefox Nightly on a Nexus 4.)

Comment 5

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Per bug 1235869, we're going to disable the Android web runtime, so we won't fix this bug in it.

(This is part of a bulk resolution of bugs in the Firefox for Android::Web Apps component, from which I attempted to exclude bugs that are not specific to the runtime, but it's possible that I included one accidentally.  If so, I'm sorry, and please reopen the bug!)