Google is rolling out a more capable version of its popular Chrome browser, including the ability to finally use those keyboard media keys inside websites like YouTube.
Unlike the recent outage of Gmail and Google Drive, the company says its Chrome team is ready to bring out more polished tweaks and capabilities to Chrome 73.
Chrome 73.0.3683.75, to be exact, is the latest iteration of the world's most popular web browser and has now entered the stable channel for users to enjoy.
Chrome power users have three channels to experiment with on their machines depending on their risk tolerance. The Developer, Beta, and Stable channels offer increasing levels of features and functionality albeit with some increased levels of instability as well.
Play/Pause Keyboard Buttons Work Now
Those venturing in the stable channel will find that Chrome 73 now allows the media keys on keyboards of their PCs to actually work inside their Chrome browsers.
A welcome feature for both power users and casual users alike, pressing the Play/Pause button on either a Mac, Windows, or Linux keyboard will also pause a video playing inside a Chrome browser even if the browser is in the background.
There are positives and negatives to using case scenarios like this, however. If both Chrome and Spotify are open and actively running on a user's desktop machine, pressing the dedicated Pause button on the keyboard may trigger an unwanted action.
In fact, users might have to consider closing every YouTube tab and any other tab with a website that responds to those media keys if they wanted to be able to listen to their favorite podcast in peace, for example.
Nonetheless, most users who leave a YouTube tab open and playing music while multitasking in other tabs will find this new feature set of Chrome 73 a very welcome addition.
Besides playing and pausing media content, Chrome's support for media keys on a keyboard will also include commands for "next track," "previous track," "seek forward," and "seek backward."
Other Tweaks, Fixes, And Security Patches
Chrome's support for media keys is the standout addition to the stable version of Chrome 73, but it also includes a few other tweaks and fixes. Most notable in the update is the inclusion of at least 60 security fixes. One of them even deals with Chrome's Omnibox not displaying correctly on Apple devices.
In fact, Chrome for Android is also getting some attention with a Dark Mode skin coming soon, but the actual public release of all these features has yet to have a fixed date.
Chome users can expect the update to take effect on their browsers in the "coming days and weeks," according to the Chrome team blog.
