The Musical Hardware Link
Google Chrome features a highly specialized API designed to interface directly with Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) devices. This means if you have an electronic piano keyboard, a drum machine, or a synthesizer plugged into your computer via USB, a website can theoretically connect to it and interact with it. While this is incredible for browser-based music production software, it is a completely unnecessary hardware vulnerability for 99% of web users. If you do not use your web browser to compose music, you must force Chrome to permanently lock out all access to your local MIDI hardware stack.
How to Block MIDI Device Access Globally
You can permanently sever the browser’s connection to your musical hardware via the Site Settings.
- Open the Google Chrome desktop browser.
- Click the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top right corner and select Settings.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
- In the main window, click on Site settings.
- Scroll down to the bottom and click to expand Additional permissions.
- Click on MIDI devices.
- Under the “Default behavior” heading, select the radio button for “Don’t allow sites to connect to MIDI devices.”
Complete Hardware Isolation
The change takes effect instantly. Google Chrome will completely sever its internal connection to the Windows or macOS MIDI driver registry. The browser will instantly auto-reject every single background request from any website attempting to scan your USB ports for connected musical instruments. You will never see a permission pop-up, and you can browse the internet with the absolute guarantee that your physical hardware synthesizers are completely isolated from malicious web scripts.