You may have noticed that Microsoft is always making changes to their operating system. If you are still on Windows 10, then things have remained the same for some time. But if you are on Windows 11, you have probably noticed that something is either added, removed or changed on a regular basis.
One feature that many people do not like is the media control overlay which shows what is playing in your web browser or in your audio application such as Windows Media Player in the notification area. So, every time you click on the date, time or volume etc., you are shown what is playing in your browser or media application. This may be fine for some since you can play and pause your video or music from the notification area, but if you like to keep things cleaner, you may want to not have it shows. In this article, we will be showing you how to disable the media control overlay from the notification area in Windows.
Since you can have these media control overlays shows for websites as well as programs running on your computer, there are two ways you can go about disabling them depending on your needs.
Disable the Media Control Overlay for Chrome and Edge
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If you want to remove the media control overlay just for your web browsers, you can easily do so for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.
The process for disabling the media control overlay for Chrome and Edge is the same, you just need to paste in different text into the address bar, depending on which one you are using. To do so, open your browser and copy and paste the following text into the address bar and press the enter key.
For Google Chrome
chrome://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling
For Microsoft Edge
edge://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling
You will then be taken to the Hardware Media Key Handling setting. From here, you can click on the dropdown selection over to the right and set it to Disabled. You will then need to restart your browser for the changes to take effect.
This method is not 100% guaranteed to fix the problem and some people report the media control overlay coming back. This is where the next method can help solve that issue.
Disable the Media Control Overlay for All Media
If you want to disable the media control overlay for all web browsers and apps on your computer, you can use the free Windhawk tool to do so. Windhawk works by adding what they call “mods” to the app that allow you to change how Windows looks and operates.
Once you download and install Windhawk, you can go to the Explore section and do a search for Windows 11 Notification Center Styler in the search box. Then you can click on Details and then Install to have it added to your Windhawk app.
From there, you can go into the Windows 11 Notification Center Styler mod and then to the Settings section.
From here, you will need to add some text to the Target and Styles boxes in the Control styles section as seen in the image below.
Here is what you will need to add to each section:
Target box
Grid#MediaTransportControlsRegion
Styles box
Visibility=1
Be sure to click the Save settings button after you make any changes. Now you will have the media control overlay disabled in the notification section in Windows. If you want it back, you can simply open Windhawk and disable the mod. Or you can remove it completely.
On a side note, Windhawk needs to be running in the system tray for the mods to stay working so if you notice things no longer work, be sure to check there.
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