[Tip] Remove Media Controls Button from Google Chrome Toolbar

Recently an AskVG reader asked me how to hide or remove Media Controls button from Google Chrome toolbar? If you are using Google Chrome browser and also want to disable or remove Media Control button/icon from its toolbar, this tutorial will help you.

When you open a website such as YouTube in Chrome and play a video or audio/music, Google Chrome browser starts showing a Media Control icon in its toolbar (near Extensions and User Profile icons) as shown in following screenshot:

This icon is called Global Media Control (GMC) and it allows users to control the currently playing music or video from anywhere in the web browser. For example, you have played a video in YouTube and now you are working in a different tab, by clicking on the Media Control Playback button in toolbar you can pause/play the video without navigating to the tab playing that video or audio file. You can also seek forward/backward and use Picture-In-Picture (PIP) mode right from the Media Control fly-out UI.

Although it’s a nice feature of Chrome but some users don’t like it. When Media Controls button is added to toolbar, it automatically moves other buttons such as Extensions to the left or right side which may start irritating users as they can accidentally click on unwanted buttons. Many users want to get rid of the annoying Media Control button from Chrome toolbar.

By default, Google Chrome doesn’t provide any setting or option to disable or remove this button from the toolbar. If you right-click on the button, you don’t get any menu or options. Also you can’t drag-n-drop the button to main Menu to hide it.

In older versions of Chrome (version 77 to 84), there was a hidden preference/flag called Global Media Controls in Chrome://flags page (chrome://flags/#global-media-controls) which could be used to turn on/off the feature and users were able to disable and remove the Media Control icon from Chrome toolbar by setting this flag to Disabled.

Unfortunately, Chrome team removed the flag from newer versions of Chrome (version 85 and later) and now users can’t use the flag to get rid of the toolbar button.

Fortunately, there is still a way to remove Media Controls button from Chrome toolbar which we are going to share in this article.

If you also want to disable or remove Media Controls button or icon from Google Chrome toolbar, following steps will help you:

1. Right-click on Google Chrome’s shortcut (present on desktop, start menu, taskbar, etc) and select Properties.

Alternatively, you can create a new shortcut of Google Chrome and open its Properties box.

2. Now add following text at the end of the string present in Target text box:

Remember there must be a blank space between existing text string and the appended string.

3. Click on Apply button and now whenever you’ll launch Google Chrome using this shortcut, you’ll never see Media Controls button in toolbar.

You can now pin the new Chrome shortcut to Taskbar or Start Menu for quick and easy access.

PS: In future, if you want to restore default settings and want to restore Media Controls button in Chrome toolbar, remove the –disable-features=GlobalMediaControls parameter from Chrome’s shortcut properties.

BONUS TIP: If you don’t want to create a shortcut to always launch Google Chrome without Media Controls toolbar button but want a way to quickly launch Google Chrome with Media Controls button removed whenever you want, you can use following commands in RUN dialog box (WIN+R):

It’ll launch Google Chrome without Media Controls button whenever you execute this command.

PS: If you are already using another “–disable-features” parameter in Google Chrome shortcut, following article will help you in using more than one “–disable-features” parameter in Chrome shortcut’s properties:

[Tip] How to Use Multiple “–Disable-Features” Parameters in Google Chrome Shortcut

Also Check:

[Tip] Remove “Extensions” Menu Button from Google Chrome Toolbar

[Fix] Media Keys Not Working in Spotify, iTunes and Other Media Players