Participate in deprecation trial for unpartitioned third-party storage, Service Workers, and Communication APIs

Beginning gradually in Chrome 113, storage, service workers, and communication APIs will be partitioned in third-party contexts. In addition to being isolated by the same-origin policy, the affected APIs used in third-party contexts would also be separated by the site of the top-level context. Sites that haven't had time to implement support for third-party storage partitioning can take part in a deprecation trial to temporarily unpartition (continue isolation by same-origin policy but remove isolation by top-level site) and restore prior behavior of storage, service workers, and communication APIs in content embedded on their site.

In addition to a general unpartitioning deprecation trial, it's possible to participate in a focused deprecation trial just for window.sessionStorage. This trial is available due to a need for some sites to migrate their Firebase signInWithRedirect flow. For more information on that migration see this article.

# Available deprecation trials

Starting in Chrome 112 Beta, we'll open up two deprecation trials:

1. DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning: allows a top-level site to unpartition (temporarily remove isolation by top-level site) in storage, service workers, and communication APIs in third-party content embedded on its pages.
2. DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning: allows a site to unpartition sessionStorage across navigations.

These will enable sites to discover and fix problems before third-party partitioning begins its rollout process in Chrome 113.

Below is an overview of the deprecation trial and what to expect. If you have feedback to share or you experience any issues throughout this trial let us know in the Partitioned Storage Deprecation Trial Github repository.

# DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning

The following APIs will remain unpartitioned in third-party contexts should you enroll the top-level site in the DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning deprecation trial: Storage APIs (such as localStorage, sessionStorage, IndexedDB, Quota, and other), Communication APIs (such as BroadcastChannel, SharedWorkers, and WebLocks), and ServiceWorker API.

Example:

For a more detailed explanation, check out the project explainer.

# DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning

If you enroll in the DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning deprecation trial, navigating a tab to an enrolled origin will cause all cross-site iframes of that same origin to remain unpartitioned only for Window.sessionStorage and only for the lifetime of that particular tab. Whereas the DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning deprecation trial affects all third-party contexts embedded within the enrolled origin, the DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning deprecation trial instead registers a given origin to receive unpartitioned access when embedded in third-party contexts.

Example:

# What does this mean for web developers?

Sites should audit their usage of unpartitioned storage, service worker, and communication APIs in third-party contexts, and, if needed, prepare for third-party partitioning before these deprecation trials expire. The intent is to expire these deprecation trials with Chrome 123, ending on May 2, 2024.

To instruct the browser to unpartition storage in third-party content embedded on its pages, top-level sites need to register for one or both of the deprecation trials and add the corresponding trial token(s) to their HTTP response headers (see detailed example below).

Each deprecation trial is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView.

# Participate in the deprecation trials

The following is a brief overview of how to participate in one or both of the deprecation trials. For more detailed instructions, visit Get started with origin trials.

1. Launch Chrome version 112 (or later) and ensure the ThirdPartyStoragePartitioning flag is enabled.
2. Verify that the behavior of third-party content embedded in your top-level site is broken by storage partitioning (if not, then no need to participate in the Deprecation Trials).
3. Register for the deprecation trial and get a token for your domains by visiting the following:
   1. For a top-level site to unpartition storage, service workers, and communication APIs in its third-party embedded content: [DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning](/origintrials/#/view_trial/-8517432795264450559)
   2. For a top-level site to unpartition sessionStorage across navigations: [DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning](/origintrials/#/view_trial/3444127815031586817)
4. Add an origin trial token to your page:
   1. For the DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning trial you may add an Origin-Trial: <DEPRECATION TRIAL TOKEN> to your top-level site’s HTTP response header, where <DEPRECATION TRIAL TOKEN> contains the token you got when registering for the deprecation trial. You can also do this via HTML ` tag.
   2. For the DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning trial, the token must be given via an HTML <meta> tag. The HTTP header method is not supported.
5. Load your website in Chrome 112 Beta (or later) with ThirdPartyStoragePartitioning still enabled and verify that any partitioning related issues have been properly mitigated.
6. To stop participating in the deprecation trial simply remove the header you added in step 2.

These deprecation trials do not support the third-party origin trials feature. The enrollee must be the top-level site for DisableThirdPartyStoragePartitioning, and for DisableThirdPartySessionStoragePartitioningAfterGeneralPartitioning the enrollee must have been the top-level site at some point in the lifetime of a given tab. The guide to troubleshooting Chrome's origin trials provides a full checklist for ensuring your token is correctly configured.

# Share feedback

Please submit any feedback or issues you encounter to the Partitioned Storage Deprecation Trial Github repository.