The Redesigned Global Media Control
Google Chrome features a unified “Media Session” control hub, usually accessible via a music note icon in the browser toolbar. This hub aggregates all the audio and video playing across all your open tabs, allowing you to pause a YouTube video or skip a Spotify track without having to hunt down the specific tab where the media is playing. Google is constantly iterating on this interface. The “Use the new Media Session UI” flag governs whether Chrome displays the classic, minimal media control panel or the newer, redesigned interface (which often features larger album art, updated iconography, and different placement for playback controls).
While redesigns are intended to improve usability, they often break established muscle memory. The “new” Media Session UI might consume more screen real estate, hide specific controls you use frequently, or clash visually with your operating system’s native media overlays. If a recent Chrome update pushed a new, clunky media control panel that you find distracting or harder to use than the previous minimal iteration, you can use this experimental flag to force the browser to revert to the older, classic interface design.
How to Revert the Media Session UI
You can force Chrome to disable the redesigned media control hub via the experimental flags menu.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click inside the main address bar at the top of the browser window.
- Type
chrome://flagsand press Enter. - On the “Experiments” page, use the search bar to look for Use the new Media Session UI.
- If the flag is available, click the dropdown menu next to it and change it from “Default” (or Enabled) to Disabled.
- Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.
Upon restarting, clicking the media control icon in your toolbar will launch the classic, older version of the Media Session interface, removing the newer design elements.