api.DeviceOrientationEvent is deprecated on Firefox, but this isn't mentioned on the page

[leandrumartin]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/DeviceOrientationEvent

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

Browser compatibility

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

The MDN page for DeviceOrientationEvent has outdated compatibility information for Firefox on desktop. My browser shows that it's deprecated and non-functional (see below for details), but the page says it's still supported and fully compatible.

What did you expect to see?

The compatibility table should say that Firefox does not support the device orientation API and that it is deprecated.

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

When I copy and paste the example code in the DeviceOrientationEvent page into my Firefox (version 149.0.0.0, Windows 11) dev tools console, I get a warning saying Use of the orientation sensor is deprecated.. This lines up sites using it not working on Firefox, for example tilting the device to pour the teapot at google.com/teapot. This is even with the device.sensors.orientation.enabled flag in about:config enabled, so it really does seem to be fully deprecated and completely non-functional in Firefox, at least for Windows.

This seems to have been the case for a few years, according to this Stack Overflow thread.

Do you have anything more you want to share?

No response

MDN metadata

Page report details

• Folder: en-us/web/api/deviceorientationevent
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/DeviceOrientationEvent
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/api/deviceorientationevent/index.md
• Last commit: mdn/content@bcfc05a
• Document last modified: 2026-02-09T18:04:48.000Z

[caugner]

Thanks for reporting. Please note that the deprecation warning doesn't imply "no support".

DeviceOrientationEvent refers to the interface (supported in Firefox per https://collector.openwebdocs.org/tests/api/DeviceOrientationEvent).

Support for the deviceorientation event itself is captured under the Window interface (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/deviceorientation_event#browser_compatibility). However, the collector test "only" checks whether the ondeviceorientation attribute is present.

If the event never fires on Firefox (Android), then we might indeed have a partial implementation.

Are you able to confirm that Firefox behaves differently than Chrome or Safari with regard to this feature? (If all browsers behave the same way, BCD considers this the de-facto standard.)

[caugner]

This lines up sites using it not working on Firefox, for example tilting the device to pour the teapot at google.com/teapot.

For what it's worth, the site is working for me in Firefox Android 149.0.1.

[leandrumartin]

Are you able to confirm that Firefox behaves differently than Chrome or Safari with regard to this feature? (If all browsers behave the same way, BCD considers this the de-facto standard.)

Edge doesn't show the console warning when a site uses the device orientation sensor, and sites using it seem to function as expected by actually reacting to the tilt (as opposed to Firefox on Windows where the warning appears and the functionality doesn't seem to work at all). I'll get back to you when I can get to a Mac to try out Safari and download Chrome to try that out.

[caugner]

(as opposed to Firefox on Windows where the warning appears and the functionality doesn't seem to work at all)

What I'm hearing is that the teapot page is broken for you in Firefox on Windows, so it would be important to know if Chrome on the same operating system has the same issue.

[leandrumartin]

Chrome and Edge both do not have the same issue.

For reference, here's what happens when I paste this sample code from the MDN page:

window.addEventListener("deviceorientation", (event) => {
  console.log(`${event.alpha} : ${event.beta} : ${event.gamma}`);
});

in each browser on the same Windows computer, all on https://www.google.com :

Edge

No deprecation warning. The sensor readings are logged.

Chrome

No deprecation warning. The sensor readings are logged.

Firefox

The deprecation warning displays, and then...nothing. No readings are displayed, no matter how much I tilt my device.