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Chrome: Music Bubbles adds floating control for Google Music

This Chrome extension lets you control the action in Google Music without needing to leave your current tab.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott
2 min read

I have ditched Google Music's Web player for Radiant Player, a standalone Mac app that lets me access and control Google Music via my Mac's menu bar and media control keys. If you use Google Music via a browser, however, and dislike having to return to the Google Music tab to control your musical proceedings, then you should know there is a Chrome extension that lets you control the action without leaving your current tab.

The awkwardly named but subtly useful Music Bubbles extension for Chrome places a small, floating control on your current page. And when you reload your current tabs or open new pages, you'll find the Music Bubbles control floating on them, too.

music-bubbles-1.jpg
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

The Music Bubbles control is a transparent circle, which allows it to remain omnipresent without being overbearing. It's gray in color when you do not have Google Music opened and turns orange when you do have it going.

Mouse over it and play, skip back, and skip forward buttons spring forth, along with thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. And if a song is playing, you'll see the song name and artist below the Music Bubbles control.

music-bubbles-2.jpg
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Perform a long click on the Music Bubbles control and the thumbs-up and -down buttons retreat and two black buttons appear in their place. The one on the left lets you drag the Music Bubbles control to reposition it, and the one on the right lets you blacklist the current site so that the control does not show up when you visit the site. You can then edit your blacklist in the extension's options.

(Via AddictiveTips)