Chrome Supports Keyboard Media Controls For Media Playback

Google has been expanding Chrome support for native Windows features. The search engine giant added Windows 10 notification support to Chrome last year. Now Google has confirmed that it will enable Media Session API for Chrome.

Easy migration: use the Opera assistant to transfer exiting data, such as bookmarks, passwords, etc.
Optimize resource usage: your RAM memory is used more efficiently than Chrome does
Enhanced privacy: free and unlimited VPN integrated
No ads: built-in Ad Blocker speeds up loading of pages and protects against data-mining
Download Opera

A Chrome engineer confirmed in a Google forum post that the browser will support Media Session API. The engineer stated:

Chrome supports Media Session API

Chrome’s support for the Media Session API means that users can utilize the keyboard media controls for media playback. Some keyboards include play, stop, and pause keys for media playback. Thus, Chrome’s support for the Media Session API will enable users to play, stop, and pause videos on YouTube, and other sites, with those keyboard keys.

We are intending to enable Media Session API on desktop from M73 onwards. We are enabling it as we are building new features in Chromium that will use the API (e.g. hardware media keys). This was previously enabled on Chrome Android and the API has not changed.

Google has also confirmed Chrome Media Session API support on all platforms. Google Git now includes a repository that states:

A few browser extensions already enable Google Chrome users to control web-based music players with media keys. Key Socket Media Keys and Streamkeys are two extensions for Chrome with which users can play, stop, and pause web-based media player playback via keyboard. Streamkeys users can also customize the hotkeys.

Enable Media Session API on desktop for all platforms since we have features in M73 using this API. This was previously enable for CrOS and Windows only but we would like to enable it for consistency on all desktop platforms.

The Chrome 73 Canary browser already supports the Media Session API. Thus, Google Chrome 73, which is due for a March 12 release, will probably support Media Session API.

Chrome supports Media Session API#

Chrome supports Media Session API