Chrome to Pause Notifications While Sharing Screen

Google is working on a feature that will allow Chrome to hide notifications while sharing screens. If you are on a Zoom call, Chrome will pause notifications while you share the screen.

Update: The latest version of Chrome (Canary) comes with this flag.

Pause Notifications

Imagine you are on a video call and share your screen. Now, a WhatsApp notification shows up on your phone.

You wouldn’t want everyone on the call to see that notification, would you?

Google is working on a solution for this. Now, this is not new. You can already do this on Windows 10 and macOS.

So, what’s coming to Chrome and Chrome OS? As the feature request bug writes in the “expected result”:

“The notification should not show until the screen sharing session is over. This does not apply to share a single tab or window as those would typically not show the incoming notification anyway.”

Mute notifications during screen share – Flag

Google will soon start testing this feature behind an experimental flag:

“Mute notifications during screen share: Prevents new notifications from being shown while a screen is being shared.

To get this working, Chrome will add “a new NotificationBlocker that listens for screen share events and stops notifications when a full screen is currently being recorded.”

Mute notifications on Android while casting

This code change also brings this feature to Android. According to a comment that I spotted inside the code, Chrome will mute notifications on Android while casting screen.

Is this for Chrome notifications on for Android notifications? That’s something we will have to test and confirm.

“if !defined(OS_ANDROID)

// This notification blocker listens to the events when the user starts
// capturing a display. It will block notifications while such a capture is
// ongoing. Note that this does not include casting the whole display and only
// covers capturing via WebContents.”

Summary

2020 is the year of Zoom calls and virtual presentations. This feature will be a really useful addition to Chrome in the present situation.

Do you agree? Let me know in the comments section below.

Source: Chromium Gerrit and bugs.chromium.org.