What is this "Play" button on Dev?

Brass Contributor

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 1.00.53 PM.png

 

I noticed it's not on Canary or Beta and dont seem to see what flag could've enabled this, but...what is it? I noticed if I'm on youtube it lets me pause the video from another tab but...it seems half baked? No context menu or disable options or anything.

10 Replies
It doesn't show up for me in edge dev.

Hi,
that button is called Global Media Controls.

I've had it on Edge insider Canary for around 3 weeks and it's also available on Dev version.
Yes, you can use it to pause/play/next/prev any media such as video or audio being played in your browser tabs.
it also exists in Google Chrome.

@goodddayy99 @matb86 

 

If you don't see it on Dev or Canary, it might be because it's disabled by default.

go to here: edge://flags/

and search for Global Media Controls flag and then enable it. after that restart your browser and go to YouTube or another website that has video, hit the play button and you will see Global Media Controls button appear next to your profile picture at top-right of the browser.

 

Annotation 2019-09-03 224247.png

 

@HotCakeX hey thanks for the reply, but that doesnt appear in the flags for me...

 

(I see Global Media Controls in Canary, but not Dev)

 

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 3.12.44 PM.png

Oh looks like it's removed now from the Dev, temporarily.
which version of Edge did you first notice it on?

@HotCakeX I'm on 78.0.249.1 (Official build) Dev, only noticed the media controls for the first time last night....and I guess can't disable it lol

I'm sure the flag will be added in the next major Dev update. the updates usually flow from Canary to Dev to Beta :)

@HotCakeX weird that the feature was added only to the Mac Dev version, with no flags on either mac or windows, no? Figured it'd get tested on Canary before Dev...

It's because when Microsoft added this feature to the Edge insider Canary first, it was enabled by default, after some time they added the flag so the feature could be enabled or disabled.
Dev should wait for its turn to receive updates too.
also Microsoft is doing an A/B testing on the new Edge insider, so not all features are available to everyone or every machine.

It's was promoted up from Chromium into both Chrome Canary and Edge Canary. In other words Edge Canary included it over from Chromium engine.  As my picture shows:

 

Yellow Top Bar Browser = Edge Canary

Blue Top Bar Browser = Chromium (not Chrome)


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