How should Media Session work with "inert" media?

[steimelchrome]

The inert attribute (spec) can be used to make elements unfocusable and uninteractable. It is not clear from the specification whether or not inertness should affect a media element's interaction with Media Session. Should it prevent Media Session actions from being sent to the page for that media element? Should it not affect Media Session at all?

FWIW, it currently does not affect Media Session on Chrome, and my initial reaction is that it shouldn't affect Media Session, but I think it's worth discussing

[marcoscaceres]

@jan-ivar, @youennf, thoughts?

• What happens is a user plays, then an inert attribute is set, what happens.

[jan-ivar]

If inertness doesn't affect playback I don't see why it should affect Media Session. Isn't it mostly for making modal dialogs?

[marcoscaceres]

Isn't it mostly for making modal dialogs?

So, yes. It's useful for dialogs.

But what happens if you have an <iframe inert> that can't be interacted with and it starts controlling the media session?

It seems like scriptable aspects wouldn't be affected. It's just the user can't interact with the iframe.

I think that's what's being asked by @steimelchrome. Is that right?

[marcoscaceres]

I guess we should also check what happens if you have a <video> and you play it and then add inert to it.

[marcoscaceres]

Ok, we just tested it, and indeed you can inert a playing video... which is kinda annoying. We didn't check it with respect to media session though.

However, it remains a question of scriptability: even though it's inert, the media session should still handle the actions.

I don't know if we need to say anything here or in HTML... but maybe one of the specs needs a note about this.

[steimelchrome]

FWIW I created this issue because a bug was opened against Chrome by a developer expecting Media Session to be disabled when an iframe is marked as inert: https://issues.chromium.org/40277135