The new Chromebook Global Media Controls look great and change how you Cast

Hiding in ChromeOS 119 (just behind a feature flag or two) are the new Global Media Controls that don’t just have a new look and feel, but actually change the way you go about casting your video or audio to nearby devices. It’s a pretty big change that I noticed out of the box in the Developer Channel of ChromeOS 121 that is here and ready to use in the Stable Channel of ChromeOS 119 if you don’t mind switching on a few feature flags.

Enable the new Global Media Controls on your Chromebook

To get going, you first need to enable the new-look Global Media Controls on your device. This is simple enough if you head to chrome://flags/#global-media-controls-cros-updated-ui and chrome://flags/#global-media-controls-cast-start-stop and turn on both of those flags. You’ll be prompted to restart afterwards, and once you’ve done those few steps, you’ll have a very, very different Global Media Controls experience.

A new look

First up, things look considerably updated. Where the old Global Media Controls looked like it belonged with ChromeOS from a few years back, the new UI looks in-line with the latest Material You design and with the updated design, it not only matches the new looks of ChromeOS, but it color-matches everything as you’d expect.

A new way to Cast

A bit more interesting to me, however, is the way this new media hub handles casting requests. For the longest time, clicking the cast icon in any app brought up a plain, white box in that window; but now the casting duties are handled by this new, updated Global Media Controls widget. The first time you go to cast and this happens, it’s a bit of a surprise, but it makes total sense. Sending audio and/or video from a Chromebook to an outside source should obviously be handled by the Global Media Controls, and moving forward, it will.

All in all, I’m liking this change. And having it turned on for the past week or so, I see no reason whatsoever that Google should hold this one back any longer. It looks great, makes all media functionality more cohesive, and it fits in with the latest ChromeOS and Android aesthetic from Google. If I were you, I’d flip it on and leave it until it arrives – hopefully in ChromeOS 120.