Chrome’s New Button Can Pause/Play Videos On Any Tab, From Any Website; Death For Auto-Play Videos?

Google shall soon release its feature called Global Media Controls, which is currently in testing mode. It shall appear on the Google Chrome browser. It will add a button to its Chrome browser, which will allow users to pause or play video from any tab.

Google Chrome’s new Play Button

Google Chrome will soon come up with a play button on its browser, situated next to the URL, beside the bookmarks star. If you have an ongoing video playing in any tab, it will allow users to play or pause a video or music that’s playing in a tab.

Once the button in enabled, the feature appears next to the URL field, and will highlight what is playing, even if it’s on a different tab. By clicking on it, a larger control pops up that lets you pause, play, or skip forward/backward without actually going to the video itself.

This feature could prove to be very useful in situations where annoying advertisements find their way into our peaceful music videos and switching tabs take longer time. This feature would also be a welcome change to Google Chrome’s recent removal of letting one to mute tabs by clicking on the speaker icon. Global Media Controls are more versatile, particularly for regular Youtube users.

How To Test This Feature?

If you have your hands on the Canary Browser, you can test this feature out for yourself.

Going to the Experiments page, chrome://flags/, search for ‘Global Media Controls’. Enable it once you find it. You must then relaunch the browser and on doing so, you can find a tiny play button next to the URL field, as mentioned above.

Once you’re listening to a song or video, the feature will allow you to skip forward or back, pause, or play the file. It works all well with Youtube, Vimeo, Apple’s podcast pages and Spotify.

Some tech heads have tried it and reported that even though it could control both audio and video, certain sites like Engadget didn’t respond to it. It also turned out to be full of bugs and crashes almost constantly.

Nevertheless, the feature is still in its testing stage and predicting anything prior to that shall not be a very motivating and wise idea. We shall keep you updated on the same.