RTCPeerConnection: remoteDescription property

Baseline Widely available

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

The remoteDescription read-only property of the RTCPeerConnection interface returns a RTCSessionDescription describing the session (which includes configuration and media information) for the remote end of the connection. If this hasn't been set yet, this is null.

The returned value typically reflects a remote description which has been received over the signaling server (as either an offer or an answer) and then put into effect by your code calling RTCPeerConnection.setRemoteDescription() in response.

Syntax

js
const sessionDescription = peerConnection.remoteDescription

On a more fundamental level, the returned value is the value of RTCPeerConnection.pendingRemoteDescription if that property isn't null; otherwise, the value of RTCPeerConnection.currentRemoteDescription is returned. See Pending and current descriptions in the WebRTC Connectivity page for details on this algorithm and why it's used.

Example

This example looks at the remoteDescription and displays an alert containing the RTCSessionDescription object's type and sdp fields.

js
const pc = new RTCPeerConnection();
// ...
const sd = pc.remoteDescription;
if (sd) {
  alert(`Remote session: type='${sd.type}'; sdp description='${sd.sdp}'`);
} else {
  alert("No remote session yet.");
}

Specifications

Specification
WebRTC: Real-Time Communication in Browsers
# dom-peerconnection-remotedescription

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also