HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
w3c
webappsec-permissions-policy
Bikeshed2018–2025
w3c / webappsec-permissions-policy

webappsec-permissions-policy

A mechanism to selectively enable and disable browser features and APIs

6Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
432GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A mechanism to selectively enable and disable browser features and APIs

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year6 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-09-12 18:01:58 UTC to 2025-01-29 13:07:45 UTC.

0122018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

6 sources
Thanks for the docs. The examples (2 & 3, https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-permissions-policy/blob/mai...) seem to me to say that search.google.com can’t grant location permissions to an iframe if the parent was forbidden them, but I didn't find an explicit example for what happens if the iframe domain already got permission previously. As you say the UI for requesting in this case would be weird, and this seems like a big security hole to me, but I can’t see a bit of the spec that explicitly forbids (though I only scanned the doc.)
In maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
It's been ages since I've played with iframes, but I'm pretty sure it does (or at least did?). You might have to specify an allow policy [0] but that's no problem if you control both sides. Since iframes are secure, data wouldn't leak unless the iframe explicitly posts it. I don't know if you can request permissions from the iframe (might confuse people), but if you already have them, it ought to be fine. [0] https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-permissions-policy/blob/mai...
In maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps
> If it was as robust as you make out then we wouldn't have a need for the cookie consent law We _don't_ need that law. All it's resulted in is tons of annoying pop-ups all over the web (which I block with an extension). Browsers already have the ability to grant or deny cookie usage per-domain, which is much more user-friendly and effective. > nor GDPR No technically-enforceable permissions system in the world will let you control what a company does with data you've already voluntarily given them, so I don't see how better permissions would eliminate the need for GDPR. > But one idea I have is where sites have to send metadata down (as part of the headers if like?) with each page stating what permissions that page requires to function Sounds like you're describing [Content Security Policy][1] and [Feature Policy][2]? Obviously those are
Read the rest
n't required by default, for backwards-compatibility reasons, but they _do_ exist. > That way users can see what each page is doing just be looking at the requested permissions even before any popup appears Can you clarify what you mean by this? Most of the permissions you described are very low-level; not the sort of thing most users would want to concern themselves with (and certainly not for every site they visit). > Further to that, you can define in the browser which permissions to allow by default - this is a little like what is available already but more granular (eg the self-modifying page example earlier). Again, most of this seems like the sort of thing users wouldn't want to concern themselves with. What benefit would result from users being able to prevent a page from modifying its own DOM, for example? For permissions that actually impact the user's security or privacy (e.g. Camera, Mic, Clipboard, Cookies, Third-Party Cookies) this already exists. (See chrome://settings/content) Could you give some more examples of permissions you believe would be valuable to include here? Preferably stuff that has a clear, concrete impact on the user's security or privacy. > Further to that, some interactions (the exploitable ones) will be logged. eg calls from one domain to another. So some of the more experienced users have the ability to scan for suspicious behaviour without having to trawl through thousands of HTTP get / post requests. Is this really such a common use case that you think this needs to be built-into the browser rather than handled via an extension or Dev Tools? I'd also like to point out that in the case of cross-domain calls, a site which wants to hide their behavior could simply proxy calls to third-party sites through their own server. > I'd also like reminder prompts. eg if a service you allowed to make location requests does it frequently, I'd want a banner across the bottom of the page reminding users that this is happening frequently and that can only be mitigated by "trusting" that service with that API (an additional manual action on top of allowing it initial access to a particular browser feature). Already exists. Browsers show an icon in the address bar and on the tab when a page is accessing sensitive information like your mic, camera, or location. Mobile browsers display a persistent notification. > Another cool feature would be if versioning was built into webpages. Each page would be versioned and that version number would stored with a checksum of the page. Thus if the page changes between refreshes, the browser knows and resets all the permissions on that page to the user defaults (ie any previous prompts would then have to be re-prompted again). So every time a site make some minor update to their code, I'd have to re-authorize all permissions on that site? Seems rather inconvenient to me, and might lead to warning blindness (which would decrease overall security). That said, the upcoming [Web Packaging Standard][3] might do the "versioning" part of this at least. > It would also be nice to have some definable CPU and memory caps too - since each tab is basically now a virtual machine. I'm not sure this is something the user really wants to micromanage. If a tab I'm using needs to use 100% of my CPU to do its job, I don't think I'd want it to bother me with a prompt; I'd much rather just see an indicator or something indicating high resource usage so I can intervene if necessary. With the recent rise of JS-based cryptocoin miners; something like this may end up getting implemented in the near future. > Thus all I ask is you respect the spirit of what I'm saying rather than taking the points literally as a written gospel I'm suggesting we implement tomorrow. There will be problems implementing that verbatim but my point is to illustrate just how little protection the web offers and how much further we need to go given its current nature is basically just allowing anyone to run any untrusted application on their local machine. Thanks for the reminder. I've gone back over all my points in this post and tried to re-imagine your suggestions in the most constructive way possible. Sorry if I still seem skeptical. You have some good ideas, but keep in mind that these problems have already been considered in detail by numerous standards committees and browser vendors, so it's no surprise that a lot of the things you've suggested either already exist, or have good reasons for not existing. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP [2]: https://github.com/WICG/feature-policy [3]: https://github.com/WICG/webpackage
In New in Chrome 70
There are a lot of busybodies on Github, sometimes these go viral on Twitter and other locations for the heated discussions. Here's a small collection of various levels of offence. Some are merely polite requests and some are "horribly offended". I think one or two of them may even be concern trolls but that doesn't matter since they still got the changes made. There are a few hundred other examples to pull from, these are just a few I chose at random while trying to select ones that are more about the code, or terms used in the code, than contributors or maintainers of the code. [0] https://github.com/WICG/feature-policy/issues/150 [1] https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts/pull/152 [2] https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code/pull/20 [3] https://github.com/braydie/HowToBeAProgrammer/issues/68 [4] https://github.com/spencermount
Read the rest
In LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.