Electron Releases

Back to PR Lookup
GitHubView on GitHub
Bug-Reaper

#49717: fix: address upstream Chromium shift to enable CoreAudio Tap API for audio capture used in electron's desktopCapturer (🍏 macOS).

Merged
Bug-Reaper
Created: Feb 8, 2026, 12:20:27 AM
Merged: Feb 10, 2026, 8:06:21 AM
11 comments
Target: main

Description of Change

Refs #49607

  1. This PR adds the NSAudioCaptureUsageDescription Info.plist key required for electron apps to use desktopCapturer. The key enables Apple's newer CoreAudio Tap API which is the new goto for chromium's plumbing responsible for desktopCapturer 1e3df01

  2. Updates documentation for desktopCapturer page to bring it up to date with macOS developments. Page has been out of date since macOS 13 when Apple introduced methods for audio-capture w/o a signed kernel extension. bc35ff5

  3. Retro-actively adds a breaking change to the V39.0.0 Breaking Changes section. Breaking change is related to chromium's use of native Apple APIs used in audio capture. bc35ff5

  4. Minor lint fix that was tripping up pre-commit hook when I went to add aforementioned docs changes. bc35ff5

🍎 : CoreAudio Tap API Reference

The new plist key is a required permission to use electron's desktopCapturer properly on macOS >= 14.2 && electron >= 39.0.0-beta4.

Additional Context

Apple quietly released a new API for doing native audio-capture and then didn't communicate well down-stream that a new Info.plist permission NSAudioCaptureUsageDescription is required.

Hope inclusion of config added in this PR can aid in downstream adoption and awareness of the new permission 🤝

In the Chromium version jump for v39.0.0-beta.4 they make the new native Apple audio API the default. So desktopCapturer abruptly stops working without the new plist entry in that version and higher. This is b/c chromium has effectively retired the old native API which didn't have plist key reqs. No fallback to the old system exists if the new system fails.

Related Website PR : electron/website#1010

Checklist

Release Notes

Notes: Addressed upstream Chromium shift to enable CoreAudio Tap API for audio capture used in electron's desktopCapturer (🍏 macOS).

Backports

39-x-y
In-flight
PR Number
#49740
Waiting to be merged
40-x-y
In-flight
PR Number
#49741
Waiting to be merged
41-x-y
In-flight
PR Number
#49739
Waiting to be merged

Semver Impact

Major
Breaking changes
Minor
New features
Patch
Bug fixes
None
Docs, tests, etc.

Semantic Versioning helps users understand the impact of updates:

  • Major (X.y.z): Breaking changes that may require code modifications
  • Minor (x.Y.z): New features that maintain backward compatibility
  • Patch (x.y.Z): Bug fixes that don't change the API
  • None: Changes that don't affect using facing parts of Electron