I wonder whether this is because Hangouts is in a frame in the Gmail page? In other words, maybe Firefox feels the need to get explicit confirmation because the URL bar host name and the frame host name are different, as shown in your fourth screenshot:

Even though both hosts are allowed. If that's the issue, I don't know whether there is an additional setting available now to work around that, or whether the developers would need to add a new one.

Are you possibly using Private Browsing mode (Never Remember History) ?

jscher2000 said

I wonder whether this is because Hangouts is in a frame in the Gmail page? In other words, maybe Firefox feels the need to get explicit confirmation because the URL bar host name and the frame host name are different, as shown in your fourth screenshot: Even though both hosts are allowed. If that's the issue, I don't know whether there is an additional setting available now to work around that, or whether the developers would need to add a new one.

That's a very good observation, and it may have something to do with it. However it has always worked fine for 2.5 years, and hangouts.google.com has the permission given to Always Allow. But maybe with the updates they changed it like you say because of the frames. Note the little check box that is missing in pop up is "Remember this decision", not Always Allow as I stated.

cor-el said

Are you possibly using Private Browsing mode (Never Remember History) ?

I never use Private Browsing.

Anybody else have any ideas how to solve please?

Please???

I don't see a setting that would treat permissions differently in a frame.

Do you want to set the default microphone permission to Allow to see whether that makes any difference? Of course, this isn't the setting you'll want to use while randomly roaming the web...

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste microp and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the permissions.default.microphone preference to display a dialog where you can enter the desired value, make the edit, then click OK:

• 0 = Prompt for permission, unless there's an exception
• 1 = Allow automatically (try this temporarily)
• 2 = Block permission requests

If Firefox still doesn't allow the framed usage seamlessly, then there definitely must be something special about the way frames are handled. You could file a new bug about it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Thank you for trying to help. I just tried what you suggested and it does the exact same issue with asking for the permission. What's so frustrating is that it has not had this problem for years then suddenly (probably from a Firefox update) it started. I will go ahead and do the bug report.

Lack of the checkbox "permanent" for microphone permission does not only happen to Hangout in Gmail. It also occurs with Microsoft Office in Onedrive.

From within Word for the web, I can DICTATE. Open a document in https://onedrive.live.com/edit.aspx?action=editnew&resid=***** Grant access to microphone. A pop-up will confirm permission to https://word-edit.officeapps.live.com

Now I opened https://word-edit... directly, irrespectively that it would not be loaded. Via the permissions icon next to https, I set microphone to "always allowed". I verifed in about:preferences#privacy > microphone that the change was saved. Nevertheless, Firefox keeps asking for permission again and again.

Meanwhile I dictate my Word documents within Chrome and Opera. They perform like a charm.

A patch for this issue of cross-site / embedded / nested permissions was just rolled out for "Nightly" (future Firefox 73) overnight. I haven't tested whether it resolves the problem, but it's good to know I can test on Microsoft's as well as Google's sites. If it tests out well and doesn't create other problems, and it doesn't involve too many related changes, there should be time to get it into Firefox 72.

Thanks for that, hope the patch solves it. When I filed the bug report they told me to buzz off. But even if it solves, the sad part is Google wants users to move away from Hangouts which is nicely incorporated into Gmail which I really like to Google Voice which I don't like and is not.

They recently stopped sending voicemail transcripts for Hangouts, when I posted about it one of their website "experts" said that it was intentional that Google wants users to move away from Hangouts and use Voice which does see the transcripts. Yuck!

Google is quite the mess, they keep on trying to build a better mouse trap but fail. Hangouts, Chat, Voice, Duo.... They really should stick with ONE platform and simply refine and improve it.

Tonight's Nightly brought no fix.

For hangouts.google.com and web.whatsapp.com , permission can be saved directly as before.

Word-online returns "No access to micophone", even with permissions.default.microphone = 1 !

Speechnotes.co still does not even show the mic icon, but maybe their webserver excludes FF by a browser query.

So I'll continue to dictate in Office-online via Chrome.

Hi sinalco, maybe I misunderstood the patch. The Bugzilla tracking page is quite long, any my report of the issue in this thread is followed by a lot of technical discussion:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1483631#c5

Is that change doesn't allow persisting the permission for the embedded content, please file a new bug (that was mentioned in comment 6, actually, but I never got around to it because I don't use Hangouts).

Hi Jefferson, thanks for bringing the bug reports to my attention. I can vaguely follow the technical discussion. It looks like departing a little from the clear input of yours. I shy away from repeating and outlining the buggy behavior. Hasn't that been done enough by several members of the forum? I rather evade to Chrome. Best, Sinalco