Daily Battles: Chrome Resumes Video with Incoming Call to Mac

I was born into a generation without smart phones. Therefore, the preferred method for me to type has always been the full-sized keyboard. That is why I linked my phone to my Mac computer, so whenever I need to send text messages, I can type on my computer.

How to Get Text Messages on Mac

I also like using my computer for browsing much more than using smart phone. Why stare at a tiny screen that seriously strains your eyes when I can read web pages with bigger font on my three large high quality monitors? Browsing on my computer also allows me to leave many tabs open in the browser for things I have not finished with, or things I will check out later.

However, when putting these two things together these days, it becomes a disaster.

Whenever I get a phone call these days, my Mac will automatically resume YouTube videos that I have either paused in my browser window, or a video that has paused by itself with the "are you still listening" message box.

You see, I don't get a lot of phone calls except ones from my boss, uhh, I mean my wife, who calls me whenever she feels like it. I have used a fire alarm ring tone for calls from her so I know the urgency of the call. So whenever she calls me, both my phone and my Mac would play loud fire alarm ring tones. As I scramble to pick up the call on my phone, my Mac would continue playing the loud fire alarm ring tones for a good five seconds (because of the latency for my Mac to know I have already pick up the call from my phone), and then my paused YouTube video would also start playing in the background, most likely a techno music video with a strong drum roll I listen to while working. What makes the matter worse is that I have to now try to find the tab in my Chrome browser with that video from my ten open Chrome windows and dozens of browser tabs.

Now imagine this happening while I was in a meeting.

After this started to become super annoying, I did my research and found this article on Apple web site:

When receiving phone call, youtube video unpauses

Guess I am not the only one suffering from this, and the culprit is a Chrome bug. Google is aware of this and the bug is being worked on and won't be available in a release soon.

So for now, what do you do if you have this problem? Here are your options:

1. Unlink your phone from your Mac.
2. Always plug in (or BT connect) a headphone, and mute the speakers when you unplug (BT disconnect) the headphone, especially when you are in a meeting.
3. Open a separate Chrome window and put all your YouTube video tabs in that window. This way you can find the auto resumed video relatively quickly.
4. Don't use Chrome for YouTube videos. Use Safari or Firefox.

Technology is always both a bless and a curse. That's today's dose of my daily tech battles. Let's keep fighting! Now enjoy some Trance while you fight your daily battles!

[UPDATE on 9/28/19] Google finally released a feature in Chrome that allows you to pause a video/music playing no matter which tab that media is on. So at least this can be helpful in our situation. Read the article here.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com