Enabling the Microphone/Camera in Chrome for (Local) Unsecure Origins

Chrome’s security policy will only allow you to access your device’s microphone/camera when a site’s has a secure origin. See here for a detailed explanation about what a secure (and unsecure) origin is. In summary; you need to host your site on https or called localhost (for when in development).

This can cause problems if you’re using a dev environment like Vagrant. You could have many named local websites configured. Moving them all over to localhost could be a real pain; both impractical and time consuming.

Photo by israel palacio on Unsplash

To ignore Chrome’s secure origin policy, follow these steps.

1. Navigate to `chrome://flags/#unsafely-treat-insecure-origin-as-secure` in Chrome.
2. Find and enable the `Insecure origins treated as secure` section (see below).
3. Add any addresses you want to ignore the secure origin policy for. Remember to include the port number too (if required).
4. Save and restart Chrome.

Remember this is for dev purposes only. The live working app will need to be hosted on https for users to be able to use their microphone or camera.