As part of its efforts to overhaul Edge browser, Microsoft is making some pretty significant contributions towards the Chromium project, including features that become used by Google Chrome as well.

One of these most recent inclusions in the feature arsenal of both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome is support for YouTube thumbnails within the native media controls overlay in Windows 10.

While this may seem a very complex thing initially, it is, in fact, something that's really simple only supposed to make controlling media playback a more straightforward process.

First and foremost, what's the media controls overlay?

Also known as a popup, the media controls overlay in Windows 10 may be the box that turns up within the top left corner when pressing the multimedia keys around the connected keyboards. The on-display volume indicator, that has been redesigned in Windows 8 but still getting used by Windows 10, is displayed alongside additional media controls to go back to the previous song, toward the next, play and pause the playback.

Because of Microsoft's contribution to the Chromium engine, both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome now displays more information when playing media within the browsers and pressing the multimedia keys around the keyboard.

Which creates virtually any media website, including here YouTube, Vimeo, and others. The amount of information isn't necessarily overwhelming, but it does come in handy since it includes the video artwork along with the title from the playing media.

What's more, if several website is playing media, this media controls overlay has a small arrow that allows you to toggle between the active sources, displaying information for every of these.

Needless to say, the feature is still in its beginning in the two browsers, so additional refinements might be included in the coming updates. Additionally, it's impossible to disable the media controls overlay at this time in the settings screen from the browsers.

But the great news is that this feature is run by a flag called:

Hardware Media Key Handling
#hardware-media-key-handling

This means that if you wish to disable the new controls, all that you should do would be to turn on this flag in the browser. To get this done in Microsoft Edge, here's that which you need to do.

First and all sorts of, you have to obviously run the most recent preview builds of Microsoft Edge - both Canary and Dev builds come with this flag, so it doesn't matter which testing branch you're currently on.

Next, within the address bar of the browser, type the next command:

edge://flags

While using search engine at the top of the screen, look for the flag simply by typing its name:

Hardware Media Key Handling

Like a shortcut, you can just copy the next code and paste it in the address bar of Microsoft Edge to quickly get to the aforementioned flag:

chrome://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling

The default state of the flag in the present builds of Microsoft Edge (and Google Chrome too) is enabled, so if you want to switch off this feature, you have to click the drop-down menu and switch it to disabled. You're gonna need to reboot the browser to save your changes.

As the aforementioned media controls overlay would no longer appear, it's vital that you know that this flag also disables support for media controls altogether. This means you won't be able to control the active media session while using multimedia keys in your keyboard, and you'll have to rely on mouse input for such tasks.