After working on havResonance v0.3 and integrating the Media Session API, I thought why stop at the browser-level media controls? So I decided to try and integrate media controls directly in the Windows notification area, and I found a way via the GSMTC API.

Over the course of a few days, I built a WPF-based C# app called havMediaControls that provides Windows media controls in the notification area.

The app lets you play, pause, resume, repeat media and in a dedicated popup window you can also adjust volume, change the playback position, and enable/disable shuffle mode and control the playback speed, if supported. It also supports multiple languages (currently English and German), and because I wanted VLC support I also wrote a player-remote fallback for VLC's Remote Control Interface. However, the service is limited and doesn't support all bells and whistles.

You can download havMediaControls from the Downloads section. It requires Windows 10 version 1809 or later and the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime x64. The source code is available on GitHub under the MIT license. As usual, there's also a screenshot on the Projects page.