Firefox Voice Fill does not recognise a disabled microphone

[ghost]

If I have the microphone disabled / shut off (in software using PulseAudio volume controls / mute button or using a hardware switch), Firefox Voice Fill does not recognise this. Instead of telling me to check my microphone because it did not receive any audio data at all, it tells me "no results found", which is not helpful at all.

See-Also: mozilla/testpilot#3329

[Softvision-CristinaBadescu]

I've tested this issue on Windows 10 x64, using latest Firefox release 58.0.2, latest Nightly build 60.0a1 (2018-02-08) and did not manage to reproduce it. I've disabled my microphone and when I performed a search using Voice Fill, the "Please enable your microphone to use Voice Fill" message appeared.

Afterwards, I've muted my microphone and then "No results found" message was displayed, but this is the expected behavior. Also, if you unmute your microphone and no sound is heard, this message will be displayed.

Can you please specify on what operating system have you encountered this issue and what Firefox version have you used?

[ghost]

Firefox 58.0.1 on Linux (KDE neon User LTS 5.12, based on Ubuntu LTS 16.04).

I've disabled my microphone and when I performed a search using Voice Fill, the "Please enable your microphone to use Voice Fill" message appeared.

You mean you did not grant access to the microphone to the website? I did not try that.

Afterwards, I've muted my microphone and then "No results found" message was displayed, but this is the expected behavior. Also, if you unmute your microphone and no sound is heard, this message will be displayed.

This is what I tried (both using hardware switch, which "mutes" on an electrical level, and using the PulseAudio mute button for this microphone). That "No results found" shall mean "Firefox Voice Fill did not hear you" or "Firefox Voice Fill could not understand you" is not clear to me as a user. IMO the feedback message could be improved.

[Softvision-CristinaBadescu]

Hello,

You mean you did not grant access to the microphone to the website? I did not try that.

Disabling microphone differs from not allowing Voice Fill to use your microphone ( which is realized from the microphone permission doorhanger: "Allow" and "Don't Allow" options). In either case, the displayed message is the same: "Please enable microphone to use Voice Fill".

To disable my microphone, on Windows 10 x64, I have navigated to Control Panel-> Sound -> Recording-> right click on my microphone -> select the "Disable" option from the context menu.

Indeed, it would be nice to have a specific message for situations like this (eg. when the microphone is muted). @andrenatal, what do you think about this? Is it possible to improve the message "No results found" for situations like this and to add some extra information such as "Please check your microphone volume settings"?

[ghost]

To disable my microphone, on Windows 10 x64, I have navigated to Control Panel-> Sound -> Recording-> right click on my microphone -> select the "Disable" option from the context menu.

I did something similar on KDE neon User LTS 5.12 (derived from Ubuntu LTS 16.04): I clicked the the systray volume settings icon and see "Playback devices" and "Capture devices", each with a mute button, a volume slider and a settings button (hamburger icon). I had the microphone muted there, which should be possible for Firefox to detect, since this is a PulseAudio device configuration setting.