Extension.inIncognitoContext incorrectly reports false

jeurissen

In private tabs, extension contexts still get false when requesting extension.inIncognitoContext

See extension demo:
https://jeurissen.co/webext-demos/private-context-detection

Related WebKit bug:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315916

Version 1.0.7 (146), WebKit 625.1.8

Tahoe (26)

jeurissen

To clarify, this happens both in spanning and split incognito mode. See:
https://jeurissen.co/webext-demos/private-context-detection-spanning
https://jeurissen.co/webext-demos/private-context-detection-split

nrudnyk

@jeurissen Thanks for the report and demos!

extension.inIncognitoContext was undefined on extension pages, we'll make it a proper boolean returning the right value as per specs (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/extension#property-inIncognitoContext):

content scripts in private tabs -> true
spanning pages -> false

The fix will land in one of the upcoming RCs.

Note on split-mode extension pages: per spec those are true only because they run in a separate incognito process with isolated storage, which Orion doesn't do yet. Could you spin up a separate suggestion/feedback post so we can track that properly?

jeurissen

@nrudnyk right. Browsers are not consistent in incognito: spanning mode. Firefox returns true in extension pages and extension popups, while Chrome returns false. And as mentioned WebKit currently always returns false except for content scripts.

jeurissen

@nrudnyk W3C WebExtension issue about this topic with clear results for each browser:
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/1026

jeurissen

@nrudnyk a dedicated issue for incognito: split can be found here:
https://orionfeedback.org/d/14033-incognitosplit

jeurissen

@nrudnyk dedicated issue for extension pages property: https://orionfeedback.org/d/14064-extensioninincognitocontext-for-extension-tabs