Edge Canary Receives Global Media Controls UI Improvements

Edge Canary Icon 256

As you may remember, Microsoft was working on the enhanced version of the 'Global Media Controls' feature for their newest Chromium-based Edge that allows controlling all active media sessions in the browser from a single flyout. Today's Canary build of Edge comes with a few improvements made to the Global Media Controls feature.

Microsoft is actually trying to improve the existing functionality of Chrome. Recently Google has started working on the 'Global Media Controls' feature. Chrome includes an experimental feature that shows a popup that is similar to the one that appears when you press multimedia keys on your keyboard. As of now, it handles the active media session only. Microsoft's implementation lists all the media sessions running in the browser, and allows you to pause or continue running them. So, if you have multiple tabs in the browser that play sounds, like YouTube, Spotify, and Vimeo, you can manage their playback from a single flyout.

The first change in today's Edge Canary build is a new media session button when the Global Media Controls feature is enabled. Here you can the old icon vs new.

The other change is the size of the toast. It is now larger, having the media controls placed in a dedicated row at the bottom. You no longer need to expand it. See the following screenshot.

Finally, the media buttons have a revamped look so it is easy to see them on the certain video artworks.

If you do not see these options yet, this is because Microsoft is rolling out new features gradually to Chromium-based Microsoft Edge users with the Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR). It is a procedure used to roll out new features to small randomly selected groups of users so that they can be tested.

👉 Tip: You can now enable Global Media Controls in Microsoft Edge by following these instructions:

Enable or Disable Global Media Controls in Toolbar in Microsoft Edge

As you may already know, Microsoft is currently using three channels to deliver updates to Edge Insiders. The Canary channel receives updates daily (except Saturday and Sunday), the Dev channel is getting updates weekly, and the Beta channel is updated every 6 weeks. The stable channel is also on its way to users.

Actual Microsoft Edge Versions

The actual pre-release versions of Edge Chromium at the moment of this writing are as follows:

I have covered many Edge tricks and features in the following post:

Hands-on with the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge

Also, see the following updates.

Thanks to Leo.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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