Provide a "reason" / "source" description API for screensharing / webcam / microphone portals (for OBS, web browsers, etc.)

[nekohayo]

I am told that in the case of screensharing / camera / microphone sharing portals, there is no such a thing as the app being able to provide a justification text for the permission request, i.e. "what context the application is asking for screen permissions from". I'm thinking it would be good for apps to be able to provide that information, so that the system's GUI prompts could tell the user which specific part of the app is requesting the permission.

I'm thinking, for example, about:

• OBS Studio: on startup it prompts me about sharing the screen, sometimes multiple times, for cases where I configured a "capture a single app window" source in it... but since that simple app is expected to change everytime, I never check the "Remember this" checkbox, so it prompts me on startup but it doesn't tell me that it's for XYZ source / capturing a single app. I could imagine podcasting tools, DAWs / audio/video editors, etc. also benefiting from something like this.

• Web browsers: it seems like there's also a need for this in Firefox for security: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1746771#c2 to identify which website/app/tab is requesting this.

[Mikenux]

For OBS Studio, the main problem is a UX problem in my opinion. See #1379 (comment).

For websites, the browser can report false information. Remember that with sandboxing, we no longer trust apps. So, if we allow to report a reason, then this must be clear for the user that it is reported by the app, and so this reason might be false... However, we don’t give confidence if we imply that the reason may be wrong.... Not easy. Also, I saw in the comments of the Firefox issue that requests might ignored for tabs not having the focus. Instead of that, maybe show the prompt when a tab acquires the focus?

Note that there is also discussion in #758.

[nekohayo]

I swear I searched everywhere I could for an existing ticket and couldn't find this! Thanks for sharing those links.

[Mikenux]

😉

[GeorgesStavracas]

Duplicate of #758