Idle Detection

Category: User input
Type: New or changed feature
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 94)
Intent stage: Shipped

Breaking change: No
Enterprise impact: None
Chromium flag: IdleDetection
Spec maturity: Incubation
Web Platform Tests: Yes

WPT details: https://wpt.fyi/results/idle-detection

Summary

The Idle Detection API notifies developers when a user is idle, indicating such things as lack of interaction with the keyboard, mouse, screen, activation of a screensaver, locking of the screen, or moving to a different screen. A developer-defined threshold triggers the notification.

Motivation

Applications which facilitate collaboration require more global signals about whether the user is idle than are provided by existing mechanisms that only consider a user's interaction with the application's own tab.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://wicg.github.io/idle-detection
Firefox: Negative
Safari: Negative
Web developers: Positive
Tracking bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=878979

Ecosystem

Web Platform Tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/?q=idle-detection
Chrome Platform Showcase: https://chrome-platform-showcase.paulkinlan-ea.deno.net/features
GenDN reference: https://gendn.paulkinlan-ea.deno.net/features
chrome.dev demos search: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achrome.dev+Idle%20Detection
MDN Web Docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=Idle%20Detection
Baseline status: https://webstatus.dev/?q=Idle%20Detection

Docs: https://web.dev/idle-detection/ https://github.com/WICG/idle-detection/blob/main/mdn-drafts/QUICK-REFERENCE.md

Samples: https://web.dev/idle-detection/ https://github.com/WICG/idle-detection/blob/master/HOWTO.md https://reillyeon.github.io/scraps/idle.html

Explainers: https://github.com/WICG/idle-detection/blob/master/README.md

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