MediaSession: playbackState property

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

The playbackState property of the MediaSession interface indicates whether the current media session is playing or paused.

Value

A string indicating the current playback state of the media session. The value may be one of the following:

none

The browsing context doesn't currently know the current playback state, or the playback state is not available at this time.

paused

The browser's media session is currently paused. Playback may be resumed.

playing

The browser's media session is currently playing media, which can be paused.

Example

The following example sets up two functions for playing and pausing, then uses them as callbacks with the relevant action handlers. Each function harnesses the playbackState property to indicate whether the audio is playing or paused.

js
const actionHandlers = [
  // play
  [
    "play",
    async () => {
      // play our audio
      await audioEl.play();
      // set playback state
      navigator.mediaSession.playbackState = "playing";
      // update our status element
      updateStatus(allMeta[index], "Action: play  |  Track is playing…");
    },
  ],
  [
    "pause",
    () => {
      // pause out audio
      audioEl.pause();
      // set playback state
      navigator.mediaSession.playbackState = "paused";
      // update our status element
      updateStatus(allMeta[index], "Action: pause  |  Track has been paused…");
    },
  ],
];

for (const [action, handler] of actionHandlers) {
  try {
    navigator.mediaSession.setActionHandler(action, handler);
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(`The media session action "${action}" is not supported yet.`);
  }
}

Specifications

Specification
Media Session
# dom-mediasession-playbackstate

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser