How can I prevent Web NFC from crashing Chrome when navigating between routes with the NDEFReader object?

Question

I am using the Chrome Web NFC API in a web app that runs on Android 13 in Chrome 110 to scan NFC tags. Chrome crashes when I navigate between routes that contain a component with the NDEFReader object and 'ndef.scan' call.

Steps to reproduce

1. Navigate to the official web NFC sample content https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/web-nfc/
2. Click the 'Scan' button
3. Scan an NFC tag
4. Now click the 'Scan' button again
5. Notice that the browser crashes

Full Code Example: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/samples/blob/gh-pages/web-nfc/index.js

Description of Problem When I navigate to a route containing a component that instantiates the NDEFReader object and then calls ndef.scan(), I can scan an NFC tag as expected. However, when I navigate away to the home screen and then back again, the web app crashes when it calls ndef.scan().

const ndef = new NDEFReader();
await ndef.scan();

Cases where the web app doesn't crash:

• If I refresh the page in the browser before I call ndef.scan again it will not crash.
• I can call scan as many times as I want as long as I don't physically scan a container before calling scan again.

Chrome Web NFC Documentation: https://developer.chrome.com/articles/nfc/

Update

• Replicable on Android 13, Chrome 110, (last OS security update Feb 5, 2023), Pixel 6
• Replicable on Android 13, Chrome 111, (last OS security update Feb 5, 2023), Pixel 6
• NOT replicable on Android 13, Chrome 110, (last OS security update Aug 5, 2022), Pixel 4
• NOT replicable on Android 13, Chrome 110, (last OS security update Oct 5, 2022), Pixel 4

Bug submitted on the Chromium bug tracker. Upvote it here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1424208

Answer 1

As shared in https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1424208#c6, the root issue seems similar to https://b.corp.google.com/issues/238257723 where a new SecurityException is raised on connect().

You can follow fix in progress in the chromium bug tracker: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1424208

March 27th, 2023 Update: As of Chrome 113.0.5672.0, the issue has been solved.