Perhaps one of the most annoying things in life is when something catches your attention while you're watching a YouTube. When you return to the video, you realize you've missed some parts and have to rewind to see them again.
Luckily, there's a solution to this problem, thanks to a developer named Mattias Hemmingsson, who created a Chrome extension called FacePause. This extension automatically pauses the YouTube video you're watching when you look away from the screen.
To create this extension, Hemmingsson used the new FaceDetector API that Google started rolling out with Google Chrome 56. The API helps in easily detecting human faces in images. It goes without saying that your device's webcam is the one used to accomplish this feat.
The idea sounds great but also scary at the same time when we consider that in the digital age we live in, we are constantly exposed to all kinds of malicious activity, especially when we let an application have control of our device's camera. Many people will not feel comfortable giving access to their camera and by extension their private life. Something that seems to be true even for the creator of the extension himself.
“I don't trust my camera and I have it covered,” Hemmingsson writes in GitHub repo.
“See it more as an experiment in new Chrome technology and not so much as a product you would use every day.”
How can you try this new extension?
You can download the FacePause extension from the Chrome Store, but to use it you need to enable Chrome's experimental features flag:
chrome://flags#enable-experimental-web-platform-features
If you don't want to install the extension, watch the demonstration video below:
