MediaTrackSettings: groupId property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2020.

The MediaTrackSettings dictionary's groupId property is a browsing-session unique string which identifies the group of devices which includes the source for the MediaStreamTrack. This lets you determine what value was selected to comply with your specified constraints for this property's value as described in the MediaTrackConstraints.groupId property you provided when calling either getUserMedia().

If needed, you can determine whether or not this constraint is supported by checking the value of MediaTrackSupportedConstraints.groupId as returned by a call to MediaDevices.getSupportedConstraints(). However, typically this is unnecessary since browsers will ignore any constraints they're unfamiliar with.

Because RTP doesn't include this information, tracks associated with a WebRTC RTCPeerConnection will never include this property.

Value

A string whose value is a browsing-session unique identifier for a group of devices which includes the source of the track's contents. Two devices share the same group ID if they belong to the same physical hardware device. For example, a headset has two devices on it: a microphone which can serve as a source for audio tracks and a speaker which can serve as an output for audio.

The group ID is not usable across multiple browsing sessions. However, it can be used to ensure that audio input and output are both being performed on the same headset, for example, or to ensure that the built-in camera and microphone on a phone are being used for video conferencing purposes.

The actual value of the string, however, is determined by the source of the track, and there is no guarantee what form it will take, although the specification does recommend it be a GUID.

Since this property isn't stable across browsing sessions, its usefulness when calling getUserMedia() is generally limited to ensuring that tasks performed during the same browsing session use devices from the same group (or that they don't use devices from the same group). There is no situation in which the groupId is useful when calling applyConstraints(), since the value can't be changed.

Examples

See the Constraint exerciser example.

Specifications

Specification
Media Capture and Streams
# dom-mediatrackconstraintset-groupid

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
groupId constraint
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 59 (Release date: 2017-06-05)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 70 (Release date: 2019-10-22)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 46 (Release date: 2017-06-22)
footnote Full support
Safari – Full support
Safari 11 (Release date: 2017-09-19)
footnote Full support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 59 (Release date: 2017-06-06)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 79 (Release date: 2020-07-28)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 43 (Release date: 2017-09-27)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – Full support
Safari on iOS 11 (Release date: 2017-09-19)
footnote Full support
Samsung Internet – Full support
Samsung Internet 7 (Release date: 2018-03-16)
footnote Full support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 59 (Release date: 2017-06-06)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – Full support
WebView on iOS 11 (Release date: 2017-09-19)
footnote Full support

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support

See also