I have created a React ponent with a microphone button that:

• OnMouseDown => User begins recording audio
• OnMouseUp => Audio recording ends

In other words, as long as the button is held down, the user can continue recording (similar to WhatsApp / other apps voice-message feature).

My issue is, on the first time the page appears on a user's desktop, the moment they click the button to record, Chrome pops up a dialog asking the user permission to access the microphone.

The problem with that is that, in order to click "ok" on the dialog, the user has to Mouse-up on the button which is causing an error due to the recording element not having been created yet.

Is there a way to make it such that OnMouseDown =>

1. Make sure user has given permission to access microphone
2. If not, ask for permission without firing off the recording sequence yet

From the research I've done, it seems I need to do something along the lines of:

const onMouseDown = async () => {
    await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ audio: true });
    // rest of code
};

But it seems that that actually starts a recorder (and there won't be any corresponding MouseUp event to end it) and all I want to do with this portion of the code is:

• Nothing if user has already given permission
• Ask for permission if the first time and exit event to ensure microphone is enabled for the next time the user clicks.

I have created a React ponent with a microphone button that:

• OnMouseDown => User begins recording audio
• OnMouseUp => Audio recording ends

In other words, as long as the button is held down, the user can continue recording (similar to WhatsApp / other apps voice-message feature).

My issue is, on the first time the page appears on a user's desktop, the moment they click the button to record, Chrome pops up a dialog asking the user permission to access the microphone.

The problem with that is that, in order to click "ok" on the dialog, the user has to Mouse-up on the button which is causing an error due to the recording element not having been created yet.

Is there a way to make it such that OnMouseDown =>

1. Make sure user has given permission to access microphone
2. If not, ask for permission without firing off the recording sequence yet

From the research I've done, it seems I need to do something along the lines of:

const onMouseDown = async () => {
    await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ audio: true });
    // rest of code
};

But it seems that that actually starts a recorder (and there won't be any corresponding MouseUp event to end it) and all I want to do with this portion of the code is:

• Nothing if user has already given permission
• Ask for permission if the first time and exit event to ensure microphone is enabled for the next time the user clicks.

• javascript
• reactjs
• audio-recording
• microphone

1 Answer 1

In case someone gets caught up with the same issue, what I ended up having to do was create a global variable checking if microphone permissions were granted (I did this via Redux). Then, when the ponent first mounts, I run an action that:

1. Checks the microphone permissions against the global variable
2. If not granted / denied, then it runs the following:

    export const checkMicrophonePermissions = () => async dispatch => {
          let retval = false;
    
          await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ audio: true })
            .then(stream => retval = true)
            .catch(err => retval = false);
    
          dispatch({
              type: MICROPHONE_ACCESS,
              payload: retval
          });
      }

Basically, it will run as the page loads the first time and pop-up a dialog asking the user to permit microphone access and sets the global variable relating to MICROPHONE_ACCESS to true / false based upon the user's reply.