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Escape key is not a user activation

Category
User input
Type
New or changed feature
Status
Enabled by default (Chrome 76)
Intent stage
Prepare to ship

Summary

The Escape key is no longer treated as a user activation.

Motivation

Browsers prevents calls to abusable APIs (like popup, fullscreen, vibrate etc) unless the user activates the page through direct interactions. Not all interactions trigger user activation. For example, clicking on a link or typing in a textbox does, but swiping fingers on a screen or hovering with the mouse cursor doesn't. Since users never intend to interact with the page through the ESC key, it should not trigger user activation. Most importantly, ESC key activation recently turned out to be the root cause of one abuse vector.

Standards & signals

Docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DGXjhQ6D3yZXIePOMo0dsd2agz0t5W7rYH1NwJ-QGJo

Samples: https://codepen.io/mustaqahmed/full/yrXLxZ

Explainers: N/A

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