Arch Linux

I turned off Jack to see if sound would play with Alsa and same issue ..

Same here, Jack-only installation, have to connect manually. Especially annoying because most players create a new Jack client
when you pause/resume, or after an ad, so you can really only connect WHILE the actual video is running.

Other browsers use alsa directly, and the alsa-jack plugin works like a charm nowadays.

Firefox 83 still connected automatically to the system ports ... maybe it was removed in the wake of  FS#52183  ?

@parkellipsen,
As workaround i run a script at boot using jack-matchmaker:

jack-matchmaker \
'Firefox:AudioStream_\d+_out_0' 'system:playback_1' \
'Firefox:AudioStream_\d+_out_1' 'system:playback_2'

it works very well but it's a workaround...

I have the same issue. I wonder if the bug ultimately lies with upstream, though.

As this issue persists in FF86 I did some digging. There is an upstream commit disabling jack auto connect: https://github.com/mozilla/cubeb/pull/613
It very much seems like the patch and this issue are related.
I use jack_control to start the jack server as described in the Arch Wiki. I guess some option has to be set to re-enable auto port connect? I found a few options in jack_control, but to no avail:

jack_control ips netmanager auto-connect 1
jack_control ips netadapter auto-connect 1
jack_control eps self-connect-mode ' '

"This patch adds a perf to disable auto jack port connection. This is useful if the user of the lib wants to coordinate connection management themselves, for example linking into a mixing app rather than straight to audio_out." the dev says ... I think this is not a good approach. I think it's better that FF links straight to audio_out and the user change by hand the connection to link to a mixing app when need is...
Angelo, those Jack_control commands are not useful in this case.

Thanks Turbo, I was aware that the commands did nothing. Just thought of documenting my trials.

I decided to escalate this issue upstream, as this looks a defect in Firefox itself. If anyone has anything to add, here is the upstream ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1698285

I just built Firefox from the latest HG tree (~FF88) where the problem seems to be resolved. At least for me.
So I installed `firefox-developer-edition` (FF87) from the repos, which works for me as well. Maybe somebody can confirm. Or is this related to some extension?

Angelo, `firefox-developer-edition` (FF87) works for me as well!

Is this solved in firefox now?