What is sticky activation?

In a nutshell

A browser window is considered to be in the “user activated” or “sticky activation” state if the user has interacted with the window by pressing a button, moving their mouse, entering some text or performing other user interaction.

The sticky activation state is not reset after it has been set, unlike the transient activation state.

Some Web APIs aren’t available unless the window has sticky user activation.

You can use the navigator.userActivation.hasBeenActive property to programmatically check if the window has been user activated.

Sources

• Sticky activation – MDN
• Features gated by user activation – MDN