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Spec-compliant JSON MIME type detection

Category
Miscellaneous
Type
Chromium catches up
Status
Proposed (Chrome Proposed)
Intent stage
None

Summary

Chromium now recognizes all valid JSON MIME types as defined by the WHATWG mimesniff specification. This includes any MIME type whose subtype ends with “+json”, in addition to the traditional application/json and text/json. This change ensures that web APIs and features relying on JSON detection behave consistently with the web platform standard and other browsers. A key motivation for this change is to fix JSON module import behavior, where previously valid JSON MIME types like text/html+json and image/svg+json would fail to load as modules. Draft CL: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/6525687 Related Issues: https://github.com/whatwg/mimesniff/issues/112. The consensus was to retain the broad definition of JSON MIME types—including all */*+json.

Motivation

Without this change, developers must rely on inconsistent MIME sniffing behavior across browsers, which can lead to incorrect content handling. Aligning with the spec ensures predictable behavior and improves interoperability.

Standards & signals

View on chromestatus.com