I want the video to autoplay on the website only if the user is connected to the wifi. I know about the navigator.connection api - but it's not available on safari, and besides it only tells you about the speed of the connection not the type.

I want the video to autoplay on the website only if the user is connected to the wifi. I know about the navigator.connection api - but it's not available on safari, and besides it only tells you about the speed of the connection not the type.

• javascript
• connection
• navigator

• A similar question was asked here: stackoverflow./questions/25968020/… Hope that's helpful! – ShanaSkydancer Commented Feb 24, 2018 at 20:49

1 Answer 1

As of December 2020, Safari has made no moves to implement the Network Information API, which as you've noted, provides the navigator.connection NetworkInformation object. That's a shame, because other browsers have supplied this for years.

This means there is no equivalent of the iOS-native Reachability APIs on mobile Safari (or desktop Safari, for that matter), so the best you can do is to use a very rough hack like:

• looking up the user's public IP and trying to match it to a database of cell providers, or
• making a test download to roughly gauge connection speed.

For the sake of pleteness, according to the MDN, the browsers that do provide navigator.connection as of December 2020, are:

• Desktop:
  • Chrome 61+
  • Edge 79+
  • Firefox, but only if the user has enabled the dominfo.enabled preference
  • Opera
• Mobile:
  • Android WebView 50+
  • Chrome Android 38+
  • Firefox Android 14+ (same caveat as desktop)
  • Opera Android 37+
  • Samsung Internet 3+

(Safari and Internet Explorer are the only major browsers conspicuously missing support.)