Transient activation

Transient activation (or "transient user activation") is a window state that indicates a user has recently directly and meaningfully interacted with the window.

The state is enabled following any user interaction, when the window has focus, that results in the browser generating one or more of the following:

• A mousedown or pointerdown event for a mouse.
• A pointerup event for any other kind of pointer.
• A touchend event.
• A keydown event, other than for the escape or browser shortcut keys.

The window is not user-activated by events that aren't necessarily caused by intentional interaction with the window, such as mouse move events or wheel events.

Transient activation expires after a timeout (if not renewed by further interaction), and may also be consumed/deactivated after using some gated features (such as Window.open()).

Transient activation is commonly used as a mechanism for ensuring that a web API can only function if triggered by user interaction. For example, scripts cannot arbitrarily launch a popup that requires transient activation ⁠— it must be triggered from a UI element's event handler. See Features gated by user activation for information about APIs that require transient activation.

The UserActivation.isActive property can be used to programmatically check the current window's transient activation state.