Inspired by the community’s enthusiastic response to the previous milestone that made the Web NFC API available to early adopters, the team behind the Web NFC API has been busy during 2020 perfecting the API for the next major milestone!
Today, I am beyond excited to announce the Web NFC API is shipping in Chrome 89 for Android by default! Thanks to the early adopter feedback received during 2020, the new API in Chrome 89 is even easier to use and offers the most flexible NDEF support optimized for your key use cases.
If you’re a web developer and want to learn more, please check out the most excellent developer documentation that explains with easy to understand code examples how to scan and write to NFC tags and interface with other exciting capabilities of this API.
The Web NFC API is available now in Chrome Dev and Canary channels and is coming to Beta in Jan 28 – Feb 4, 2020 and hits Stable in March 2, 2020.
Happy hacking with this new web capability! 
Anssi Kostiainen, Web NFC Community Group Chair
]]>Since its inception in 2015, the Web NFC Community Group has been exploring means to allow web sites to read and write to nearby NFC (Near Field Communication) devices (e.g., tags and phones) in a secure and privacy preserving manner.
I’ve had an honor to lead this passionate group of people on this journey and see how the early (some said crazy!) idea has grown and gathered a passionate community and fans around it. Thanks to encouraging feedback from a diverse group of browser engineers, spec authors, web developers, NFC technology, usability and privacy experts, and the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee himself, the Web NFC capability is now exposed through an ergonomic yet capable API able to support both emerging and established NFC use cases. What has remained throughout the years is the focus on a lightweight binary message format called NDEF that works across different tag formats, and provides a stable foundation to build on in the future.
Today, I’m thrilled to announce the group has reached the point at which it feels the Web NFC specification (explainer) and its Chromium implementation are ready for broader ecosystem feedback. You should see Web NFC pop up in Chrome’s Active Trials in January 2020, and if you just can’t wait, you can try Web NFC already today using Chrome Canary on Android by toggling the “enable-webnfc” flag.
Happy experimentation!
Anssi Kostiainen, Web NFC Community Group Chair
]]>On 2015-05-15 the Web NFC Community Group published the first draft of the following specification:
Participants contribute material to this specification under the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA).
If you have any questions, please contact the group on their public list: [email protected]. Learn more about the Web NFC Community Group.
]]>The Web NFC Community Group has been launched. See the Web NFC Community Group Charter and NFC input specification for more information. Anssi Kostiainen will be the initial Chair.
In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account.
This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2015-03-11 by Wayne Carr. The following people supported its creation: Wayne Carr, Jeffrey Yasskin, Zoltan Kis, Aswini S, Anssi Kostiainen. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.
Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.
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W3C Community Development Team