Voice: detect missing permissions for microphone use

[Tyriar]

Testing https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-copilot/issues/4203

Repro:

1. On macOS
2. Open chat via cmd+i, macOS mic access popup shows (this was unexpected as I just pressed cmd+i, not held)
3. Click deny access, 🐛 blue pulse animation shows and doesn't stop

Clicking the mic continues to toggle the state but doesn't actually do any recording. Ideally we would see access is restricted and direct the user to the macOS mic permissions.

[bpasero]

Related: https://github.com/Azure-Samples/cognitive-services-speech-sdk/issues/2238

As it turns out we would have to implement this on our own, the library does not provide this information, nor plans to add this in the future.

[bpasero]

I was really hoping that we can detect this using web APIs and I have tried the following (needs [1] for permissions):

navigator.permissions.query(
    { name: 'microphone' } as any
).then(function(permissionStatus){
    console.log(permissionStatus.state); // granted, denied, prompt
})

But this always returns denied. I was then hoping this would do it:

navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ audio: true }).then((stream) => {
    /* permissions */
}).catch((error) => { /* no permissions */ });

But I always seem to be getting a stream even when permissions are not granted.

If someone has more ideas, opening for help wanted.

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/commit/707bffbdae207740940e86a11b8178978515f9d0#diff-ce90ef6ffd304cc541efa8135dc4878c7b61889d2b2d5ef69e196af6cea7647b

[Tyriar]

@bpasero I'm guessing you would need some mac native code to check the OS-level permissions for the app, the query API giving denied all the time seems correct here as the app is unable to use the mic completely.

[bpasero]

@Tyriar I think the navigator.permissions API should return granted when I did grant permissions, but I also see that not all permissions can be queried like that, so its possible that microphone is not one of them.

I would like to avoid having to write native code for this and ideally find a web solution that works on all platforms. I am sure other apps must have this issue too?

[Tyriar]

Deepak or Matt would know more about using permissions, my experience with it is fairly limited to mainly just clipboard access.

[bpasero]

At least https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions/query indicates a lot more than just clipboard.