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Huddle mediaDevices access crashes the whole app when navigator.mediaDevices is undefined #3118
Description
Summary
In a WKWebView running in a non-secure context, navigator.mediaDevices is undefined. The huddle code accesses it unguarded in mount-time effects, so the entire React tree crashes to the "Something went wrong" error boundary with:
undefined is not an object (evaluating 'navigator.mediaDevices.enumerateDevices')
Where (v0.4.26, a31fc4d2)
Unguarded, and reached from useEffect on mount (i.e. crashes without the user ever starting a huddle):
desktop/src/features/huddle/lib/useAudioDevices.ts:20—navigator.mediaDevices.enumerateDevices(), plusaddEventListener/removeEventListenerat :30 / :32desktop/src/features/huddle/HuddleContext.tsx:168/:173—navigator.mediaDevices.addEventListener/removeEventListener(output-device effect)desktop/src/features/huddle/HuddleContext.tsx:374—navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(huddle-join path; crashes on join rather than on mount)
Prior art in the codebase
The profile avatar path already guards this exact pattern:
desktop/src/features/profile/lib/animatedAvatarCapture.ts:128 — if (!navigator.mediaDevices?.enumerateDevices) return [];
So the huddle paths are just inconsistent with the app's own established convention. (Note getUserMedia at animatedAvatarCapture.ts:154 is likewise unguarded, if you want to standardize across both features.)
Repro
Run the desktop app in a WKWebView context where navigator.mediaDevices is unavailable (e.g. a non-secure-context webview). On mount of the huddle context, the app crashes to the error boundary.
Suggested fix
Guard the huddle mediaDevices accesses the same way the avatar code does — degrade to an empty device list / skip listener registration rather than throw. The mount-time effects should no-op when navigator.mediaDevices?.enumerateDevices is absent; the getUserMedia join path should surface a clear "microphone unavailable" error instead of the opaque crash. Happy to open a PR.
Activity
dpetrakov commentedon Jul 30, 2026
@gimballock you offered to open a PR on this – I hope it is alright that I went ahead, since the issue had been quiet for a few days. Happy to close mine if you already have one in flight.
The fix follows your suggestion directly: all five call sites now degrade instead of throwing, using the same guard shape as
profile/lib/animatedAvatarCapture.ts:128. Two details worth flagging, both from working through your list:HuddleContext.tsxneeded the guard placed after theinvokecalls, not before. The list itself comes from Rust vialist_audio_output_devicesand works fine withoutmediaDevices– only thedevicechangelistener needs guarding, so an early return at the top of the effect would have silently dropped output devices on every platform.getUserMediajoin path throws a sentinel thatformatHuddleActionErrormaps to "Microphone access isn't available in this window. Try restarting Buzz." rather than a silent no-op, which matches what you asked for.I left
animatedAvatarCapture.ts:154alone – you flagged it in the issue, but it is a different feature, and the guide is explicit about not bundling drive-by changes. Easy follow-up if a maintainer wants it.fix(huddle): guard mediaDevices access when the API is unavailable
test(huddle): cover the mount-time crash with a jsdom render