Global Media Controls in Microsoft Edge Receive a Dismiss Button

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 if 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.

Starting in Edge 78.0.276.0, which is now available in the Canary branch, the toasts in the media flyout have received a dismiss button:

Here is how it works in action:

This minor, but useful change improves usability of the feature by allowing the user to quickly get rid of unwanted media streams.

The description for this change states the following:

GMC: Add ability to dismiss a media session.

This CL adds an X button to the sessions in the Global Media Controls dialog (when paused) that dismisses the session from the dialog. This also updates the MediaNotificationContainer API to receive MediaSessionInfo updates and foreground color updates so that we know when to show the button and what color to make it.

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.

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.

2 thoughts on “Global Media Controls in Microsoft Edge Receive a Dismiss Button”

    1. He is showing the new Edge that’s being developed. It’s based on Chromium. If you pay attention to the details, you will notice that the wireframe icon style is that of Microsoft and not Google.

      He’s not talking about the old Edge.

      Reply

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