Google’s Beta channel for their apps occasionally give you early access to some great features, and today’s Beta for Chrome on Android is definitely one of those occasions. Whilst the update brought multiple changes with it both on the surface and under the hood the headline act has to be the launch of background playback for media.
The new functionality is defiantly great but using it isn’t quite intuitive. Once you’ve got your media playing in a Chrome Tab you can with switch to a new tab, go to the home screen or even turn off the screen. When you do the media playback will pause, however, it will also have placed a media control in your notification shade.
Simple swipe down to your notifications and click play. Obviously turning off your screen before doing this would be a longer workflow so if you’re looking for screen off playback then perhaps go home before unpausing and turning off the screen. Check out the example below.
For those who don’t have YouTube Red this may be one way to get background playback of YouTube content, not to mention anything else that’s currently coded to take advantage of the system. Unfortunately, this does require some scripting on the content side so it doesn’t look like this will just work out of the box from day one, but having the option of the functionality is always better then it just not existing.
How would you use background media playback in Chrome? Let us know below.
