Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (Chromium) displays media overlays for YouTube videos when you use media keys on the keyboard, here is how you can disable them with a nifty little app that works on Windows 10.
Recently, more users noticing this in Chrome and Chromium Edge browsers when they use multimedia keys on the keyboard while videos are playing on YouTube.
For the folks who don’t know, Google Chrome supports media sessions Service API and multimedia keys in hardware keyboard, as a result, if you use media keys for videos in Chrome browser, you’ll see overlay like below which incudes on-screen displayed (OSD) volume bar with “Chrome.exe” and media buttons.
Microsoft worked with Chromium team to brought Media Control Overlay to dev and canary builds of Edge browser as well.
Some users don’t like these overlays and complain Chrome is hijacking their multimedia keys when they use Spotify or iTunes applications by giving priority to Chrome than other media playing apps, as a result, with Chrome open, the media keys don’t work for these apps. To fix this, which also disables overlays in Edge and Chrome browser, you need to disable a coupe of flags.
Disable Media Overlays on Chrome and Edge browsers
1. For that, visit about:flags page and search for “Media Session”
2. Select Disabled for the following flags and relaunch the browser.
1. “Media Session Service”
2. “Hardware Media Key Handling”.
You need to perform above things by visiting about:flags page in Edge and Chrome separately.
HideVolumeOSD
There is another way to turn off media control Overlay in browsers without needing to turn off the above said flags, that requires running a freeware app called “HideVolumeOSD” on Windows 10.
Four years back, the app was specially developed to hide on-screen volume bar, running this now works to turn off overlays in browsers that support it.
Here is how you need to use the app: download and install the app, ensure you choose “Tray icon version” during the install to as you can see the app running or not from the system tray. If you want to see Media overlay, select “Show Volume OSD” in app menu in the system tray.
Since flags are not going to stay for that long, we suggest you to keep running this app when you use Edge or Chrome browser or Netflix or iTunes to avoid overlays. You can download HideVolumeOSD 1.2 from this page. What’s your take on this tip?
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