Google Chrome Spotted With Global Media Controls in the Toolbar

Google is working on to add a play and pause button on its Chrome browser’s toolbar that will help users pause or resume a video playing in the browser, regardless of the where it’s coming from, as per a new feature spotted in the Canary channel.

According to ZDNet, the new Google Chrome feature is called Global Media Controls (GMC) and is now in testing phase. The feature was first spotted by Techdows, reporting its existence in version 77 of the Chrome Canary channel.

The button will work with both audio and video content and will work across multiple Chrome windows.

“The users will be able to pause a video that’s playing in a different window altogether, and not necessarily the ones playing in the current one,” said the report late Saturday. The button will be available on desktop versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Last week, Google was found to have a new feature in the pipeline that would enable its Chrome browser to block resource-intensive ads by default. The search giant is internally calling the new feature “Heavy Ad Intervention” that is designed to limit “heavy ads” that often affect the Web browsing experience.

Notably, the new development emerges in the midst of the ongoing changes that have been implemented to restrict third-party ad blockers on Chrome. The changes are planned through the Manifest V3 standard that projects the new DeclarativeNetRequest API as a replacement for the existing WebRequest API and aims to regulate ad blocking capabilities of browser extensions.

Written with inputs from IANS

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