Question

What do I need to do following the deprecation of inline installation of screen sharing extensions in Google Chrome?

Applies To

• Chrome 71 and later
• Screen Sharing
• Video API

Answer

In January 2019, extension-free screen sharing on Chrome was made available with the release of Chrome 72. If you are still on Chrome 71 or below, an extension is required to screen share. The getDisplayMedia() API was released in Chrome 72. Users that already have the screen share plugin installed are not affected by updating to Chrome 71.

What does this mean for my users?

For Google Chrome versions 70 and older, if you have not updated your own app, your new customers are redirected to the Chrome Web Store to install your screen sharing extension via the inline installation method. As a result, they will be navigated to the Chrome Web Store to download and install your screen sharing extension before they can share their screen.

With the release of Google Chrome 71, support for inline installation of screen sharing plugin was removed. Prior to this, end users were able to download the screen sharing plugin in the Chrome Web Store via Chrome's inline installation function. However with Chrome 71, this method no longer works. To work around this, you will need to update your application to explicitly launch the Chrome Web Store when an end user wants to install the screen sharing plugin. For more information regarding this change, you can review Chrome's developer guide.

Vonage Video API has updated its JavaScript SDK to support Chrome's v72 implementation of getDisplayMedia() and thus obviate the need for an extension. To maintain a good user experience, we highly recommend that you update your app to use the latest version of the Vonage Video JavaScript SDK.