Google has just introduced an extremely useful management feature for Chrome

As a gift to celebrate the new year 2020, Google has just introduced a management and control feature for Chrome music and video player called Global Media Control, which allows you to control the entire media content currently playing in background mode. In other words, this feature makes it easy to control videos and music playing in Chrome tabs right from the browser toolbar, as shown in the illustration below:

This feature is currently being rolled out to Chrome 79 users through an update from the Google server. However, you can also actively enable it via the Chrome flag manually.

Enable Global Media Control in Chrome

Step 1 : Launch Google Chrome.

Step 2 : Navigate to chrome: // flags menu and search for keyword 'Global media controls'.

Step 3 : Activate the flag and relaunch the browser when required.

After Chrome restarts, a play button will appear on the browser toolbar whenever there is a media file playing in the background or foreground.

Try to access and play any YouTube video, you will see a play button displayed next to the address bar. Clicking this button will display media content metadata including the title, source of the content, and play / pause / skip buttons. Of course, Global Media Control will not only be limited to YouTube, it also works with nearly all popular media streaming services like Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Dailymotion and Microsoft.

Global Media Control is especially helpful if you have a habit of opening multiple Chrome tabs while working. You will not need to waste time searching for which tab is playing audio to manage as before, instead, everything will be managed on the browser toolbar.

Other Chromium-enabled browsers like Edge Chromium will also receive this feature in the coming months.