Global Media Controls (GMC), the tile that lets you control media playback on Chromebook, is moving to the quick settings area on the desktop.
Update – 25-SEP-2020: You will be able to pin or unpin Global Media Controls from the Quick Settings menu. Source: Chromium Gerrit.
Update – 25-SEP-2020: This is now available in the Canary channel of Chrome OS. In fact, you can control media playback from three different places:
- The regular notification (which will soon go away)
- Quick settings
- Global Media Control Icon
Global Media Controls
Global Media Controls or GMC is Google’s effort to unity media playback controls across all platforms.
You will see the similar UI on Chrome, Chrome OS and even Android.
From GMC, you can pause or resume playback while playing a YouTube video and music from Spotify, etc. On a Chromebook, you can enable Picture in Picture mode as well from here.
There are plans to add Chromecast controls as well to this menu.
To summarize, GMC will be the media hub for Chrome and Chrome OS.
GMC in Quick Settings
A code change request I spotted today talks about moving GMC to the Quick Settings area on Chromebooks.
Quick Settings is the panel that pops up when you click time/battery icons on the bottom-right corner of your Chromebook desktop. Here is how GMC looks like on the Chrome OS notification area now.
You can see the YouTube player notification there with options to pause and move tracks.
Now, here is the proposed new design:
Notice the media controls within the Quick Settings tile? I also see a media icon next to the battery icon.
The feature request bug for this change has a video demo as well.
The current UI has an “x” icon to remove media notification. I accidentally clicked it and removed playback controls a couple of times.
The new design takes that away. I will no longer accidentally remove them. However, if you usually close this notification, this change might disappoint you.
Summary
Global Media Controls in the Quick Settings panel will make it easy to access and use. However, lack of an option to remove this notification might be a disappointment for a few.
What do you think, is this a welcome change, or something that will add clutter to the Quick Settings panel?
Related Reading
Source: Chromium Gerrit & bugs.chromium.org.
I prefer GMC in the quick settings. I’m always clearing all my notifications, which also clears the GMC notification. This simplifies things for me. I like simple things.
I wonder how it will handle multiple GMC notifications. For instance, if I’m on Zoom and I listen to a WhatsApp voice memo, there’ll be two GMC notifications in my notifications. Will the same happen here? We must wait to see…
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Thank you so much!