WebUSB in Extension Service Workers

Category: Device
Type: New or changed feature
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 118)
Intent stage: Prepare to ship

Summary

Allows web developers to use WebUSB API when responding to extension events by exposing WebUSB API to Service Workers registered by browser extensions. This API will not yet be exposed to Service Workers registered by sites but the implementation experience gained by supporting the API for extensions will be valuable for such a future project.

Motivation

As Chrome Apps API chrome.usb will soon be deprecated, developers are encouraged to migrate to web apps or Chrome Extensions. For the Chrome Extension case, manifest V3 deprecates the background page and recommends developers to migrate to service workers. As a result, it is required to support WebUSB in service workers.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://wicg.github.io/webusb/#enumeration
Firefox: Negative — Mozilla has not provided a position on this feature but their position on WebUSB is negative
Safari: Oppose — Apple has not implemented WebUSB due to concerns about fingerprinting
Web developers: No signals
Tracking bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1303193

Explainers: https://github.com/nondebug/webusb/blob/service-worker-explainer/extension-service-worker-explainer.md

View on chromestatus.com