api.SpeechRecognition - Chromium-based browsers don't support this

[bohwaz]

What type of issue is this?

Missing compatibility data

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

Looking at the compatibility table, it looks like because Chrome has support, all Chromium-based browsers (Brave, Vivaldi, Opera) will support speech to text.

It's not the case, as Chrome actually send the audio data to Google servers, which return it in text form. And Chromium-based browsers are not allowed to use this API without paying a (very large) sum of money to Google.

So in practice, only Chrome and Edge support speech to text.

This is explained here: brave/brave-browser#3725 (comment)

MDN should at least add a precision that this feature is not available in most Chromium-based browsers, meaning support is not as good as it seems.

What browsers does this problem apply to, if applicable?

Chromium (Chrome, Edge 79+, Opera, Samsung Internet)

What did you expect to see?

A warning that the feature is not supported everywhere.

Did you test this? If so, how?

Reading MDN.

Can you link to any release notes, bugs, pull requests, or MDN pages related to this?

No response

Do you have anything more you want to share?

No response

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_API

MDN metadata

MDN page report details

• Query: api.SpeechRecognition
• Report started: 2024-10-07T01:22:44.210Z