Chrome Story

Chrome Will Get Android 11-Like Media Controls

Google Chrome will soon add Android 11-like audio picker to its media control UI. This feature is currently under development.

Global Media Controls Seamless Transfer

I recently spotted a Chrome flag that spoke about audio output transfer. I mentioned it in one of our recent articles. However, it wasn’t clear how this is going to look like, or work.

This morning, however, Google released an update to Android 11 Beta. Mishaal Rahman from XDA Developers spotted this change in the media control notification:

You now have an option to select the audio output device. The flags and the bug report that I saw the other day started making sense. I updated my Pixel 2 to the latest beta and got this feature. Here is how it looks like:

When you tap on the speaker audio icon, you get a list of audio devices to choose from:

Google Chrome UI

We have already seen the Chrome flag:

Global Media Controls Seamless Transfer – Enables selection of audio output device to play media through in the Global Media Controls UI. Requires #global-media-controls to also be enabled.

Today, however, I have screenshots from a Chrome bug, showing how this feature is supposed to look like:

Here is one more screenshot, with a single notification:

Do you see the similarity between the two notifications? It will take a while before we can test this on Chrome. However, it is clear that all the work that the team is putting on Chrome’s media control UI is to make it closer to that of Android.

The same UI and experience across mobile and desktop, including Chromebooks.

I am still waiting to see if this will let us change audio output for Chromecast.

Global Media Controls on Chrome currently shows playback from your Chromecast too. When the audio switcher UI is enabled, will it allow us to change the audio output of Chromecast too?

For example, cast video to the TV, and then switch audio to a headphone connected to the computer or phone?

Do you think this will happen? Let me know in the comments section.

Source: Gerrit and bugs.chromium.org.

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2 responses to “Chrome Will Get Android 11-Like Media Controls”

  1. Mr Oscar O K Ofori-Brown

    I hope it does be nice they are sync the chrome is and Android is. I do hope Android 11 is brought to chrome is since they skiped Android 10

    Reply
    1. Dinsan – Bangalore, India – Digital Minimalist & Content Developer. Drinks Tea and writes Stuff (mostly about Chromebooks). My views are mostly copied from others.
      Dinsan Francis

      I’d love to see that new ripple effect too please!

      Reply

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