Proposal: Enable changing the permissions for only new user

[wydgetlabsadmin]

Wanted to flag a feature request where you can change the permissions for only new users so that new users don't need to opt in to a permission again when there is a permission update in the extension.

Right now when you update the permissions, it updates it for all users - disabling the extension and making it impossible to expand the feature set without using optional permissions.

[fregante]

I don’t think this strictly needs new config/flags, but browsers could handle new permissions differently.

Browsers are already able to deny access to certain hosts even if specified in the manifest. For example, the user can go visit chrome://extensions, open the details of an extension, and disable certain hosts.

Proposal

Likewise, the browser could install an updated manifest and keep the new host disabled, using this capability. It is up to the extension to use browser.permissions.request() to obtain access to this new host

Notes

• Safari is not affected by this issue, at least for hosts
• Chrome does not have the ability to block non-host permissions this way
• Firefox does not have this capability at all AFAIK