Microsoft will fix YouTube audio issues on Chromium browsers

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Key notes

  • Google has been receiving increasing complaints regarding YouTube's audio capabilities.
  • Investigations revealed that there are incompatibilities between Windows 10's drivers and the Chromium engine.
  • Microsoft engaged itself to collaborate with Google to fix YouTube audio issues on Chromium.
  • Microsoft will not just fix the Chromium-based Edge, but also Google Chrome.

It’s no secret that Chromium-based browsers are becoming very popular among users, especially because of the open-source nature of the engine.

However, this doesn’t mean that the system is flawless, one perfect example being the fact that many YouTube users have reported audio issues whenever they watch videos through them.

Google and Microsoft have confirmed that they’re working together on fixing audio issues and providing enhancements for Chromium-based browsers, but not just for their own Microsoft Edge, but also Google Chrome.

YouTube complaints regarding the audio have been on the rise

Google revealed that there has been a significant rise in complaints on YouTube regarding a variety of issues, and after looking over all of them, they’ve narrowed down the issue to 3 probable causes:

  • Users may have accidentally muted YouTube
  • The output device may have been changed
    • This can happen if, for example, users have two monitors, but only one audio connection
  • Windows 10’s drivers.

Microsoft and YouTube will collaborate to fix the audio issue

The most feasible culprit for the Chromium-YouTube issues seems to be the drivers as both Microsoft’s native and third-party drivers have been known to cause issues with YouTube audio.

Besides, using devices such as HDMI monitors with independent volume, USB sound cards and others of the sort do nothing but further worsen the issue.

As such, both Microsoft and Google will start collaborating in order to test out the various compatibilities between drivers and the Chromium browser.

They had this to say in a Chromium commit code:

This adds getters/setters as well as notifications for the status of the application-level volume for Chromium

They went further, adding the following:

This allows Chromium-based browsers to develop solutions for user pain points that arise from having muted Chromium or having lowered its volume from system menus, then forgetting about the changes. Also, when other applications make these changes and Chromium UI does not reflect it

Unfortunately, everything is in mere testing phase, and there is no definitive roadmap as to when these changes will hit live, and therefore become available to the common user.

Have you been experiencing issues with YouTube’s audio? If so, let us know if you’re excited about these two developers joining their resources to fix the issue.

If you want to learn more about the latest developments in the tech world, let us know by leaving us a message in the comments section below.

More about the topics: driver, YouTube