Google is working on a Chrome feature that should have been long available to users, and that’s media controls that will let you immediately deal with annoying videos that play automatically on websites or manage playback of videos you want to watch. The global controls should work on any webpage that displays any video, although the feature is in testing for the time being.
As it is right now, you can mute sites that have auto-playing clips, but the new controls would be even more helpful on the sites where you’d actually want controls to play, pause, and even rewind and fast-forward the clip.
The Media Control Overlays feature is available in the Canary version 77 of Chrome, which you can test for yourself by installing it from this link.
As Techdows shows us in the following image, the controls appear in the toolbar, next to the URL of the site that’s playing video. Click on the play icon, and a broader menu opens up, letting you manage the video.
The Media Control Overlays works both with audio and video, per Engadget, although you can still expect some issues along the way on some sites.
But, again, the feature is only in testing for the time being, which explains all the bugs. Once Google fixes them, it’ll be ready for a public launch. It’s unclear, however, when that will happen. For the moment, the only way to experience it yourself is installing the Canary version at this link, and enabling it from the Chrome://flags section.
