Global Media Playback Button is Coming to Microsoft Edge

Edge Default Icon 256

Microsoft is going to implement a new Global Media Control for their Chromium-based Edge browser. The feature is a work in progress, allows controlling all active media sessions in the browser from a single flyout.

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.

The flyout is available via a dedicated toolbar button. A commit reveals Microsoft's view of the feature.

Show a list of all media sessions instead of just the active one. This CL updates the global media controls UI to show all media sessions instead of just the most recently active media session.

To Enable Global Media Playback Button in Microsoft Edge,

  1. Close Microsoft Edge Canary.
  2. Right-click the Edge Canary shortcut and select Properties from the context menu.
  3. Add --enable-features=GlobalMediaControls after the msedge.exe portion in the shortcut target box.
  4. Launch Edge using the modified shortcut.

The following video demonstrates the feature in action.

👉 Alternatively, you can enable the Media Controls button with a flag, as explained in the following blog post:

Enable or Disable Global Media Controls in Toolbar in Microsoft Edge

 

The browser installs updates automatically. Also, you can manually check for updates by visiting the menu Help > About Microsoft Edge. Finally, you can grab the Edge installer from the following page:

Download Microsoft Edge Preview

At the moment of this writing, the latest Microsoft Edge Chromium versions 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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