DisplayMediaStreamConstraints.surfaceSwitching

Category: WebRTC
Type: Chromium catches up
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 107)
Intent stage: Shipped

Summary

Adds an option to programmatically control whether Chrome shows a button for switching tabs while screen-shared. This option will be passed to navigator.mediaDevices.getDisplayMedia().

Motivation

The [Share this tab instead] button allows users to seamlessly switch which tab they’re sharing, without having to select the video-conferencing tab again (1), click a button to initiate getDisplayMedia() again (2), and selecting a new tab out of a long list of tabs again (3). This behavior is exposed conditionally because not all Web applications are able to handle this behavior. Most notably, applications centered around self-capture and cropping might have trouble. For a more elaborate discussion, see https://github.com/w3c/mediacapture-screen-share/issues/223.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://github.com/w3c/mediacapture-screen-share/pull/225/files
Firefox: Neutral — Jan-Ivar Bruaroey from Mozilla, and Youenn Fablet from Apple, have both collaborated with us closely in shaping this PR. They have then approved merging this PR into w3c/mediacapture-screen-share. This is implicit support, so I'd consider it POSITIVE even though, as of the time of this writing, the official request for position has not yet been answered.
Safari: Neutral — Outdated: Jan-Ivar Bruaroey from Mozilla, and Youenn Fablet from Apple, have both collaborated with us closely in shaping this PR. They have then approved merging this PR into w3c/mediacapture-screen-share. This is implicit support, so I'd consider it POSITIVE even though, as of the time of this writing, the official request for position has not yet been answered. Edit: Youenn stated he tends to go with "neutral" given that it's a hint
Web developers: No signals
Tracking bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1337019

Explainers: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kqdLoUcwWe8znVCMXyz2FHk9WMylHbIo7gUjhyHmY_w/edit?usp=sharing

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