should be credited for spotting the button that would supposedly allow users to swiftly stop and restart media files running on a tab, eliminating the need of investigating the entire page to control such audio and video files. The button is now operational but only in Chrome’s early Canary version.
The Play button is included in what Google is referring to as the Global Media Controls (GMC) package. From what it looks like from the Canary’s code, the button should offer users a smooth experience in stopping or silencing an already playing file.
As of now, the Playback button is expected to be supported by sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Spotify. However, if things go well, expect the feature to branch out to other sites in the future as well with more polishing and improvements.
There’s no official date announced regarding the feature’s availability on Chrome’s stable version but a safe guess would be that it shouldn’t take long, considering how initial tests are going smoothly. Interested users can .
One thing that can be said for sure though, is that the new button would make it easier to stop the already playing media files, instead of using the mute button on Chrome tabs. The mute button requires users to locate the tab playing the audio/video files and that can be inconvenient in most cases.
Although the feature is still under development (it has some bugs, such as when enabled it hangs the whole browser and restart/close the chrome on its own), users can try it out by enabling the “chrome://flags/#global-media-controls” flag after installing Canary.
