Pause YouTube Videos By Looking Away From Your Screen With FacePause

FacePause is one of the most intuitive Chrome extensions ever released. It is an experimental project which makes the Google Chrome browser automatically pause videos if the user looks away from the screen. Needless to say, the extension requires you to have a webcam on your laptop or desktop.

The extension is based on the FaceDetector API which was released into Google Chrome version 56. The FaceDetector API is embedded into Google Chrome which allows the browser to work with human faces that are identified in images. The extension makes use of the API to scan human faces appearing on the webcam continuously, and whenever the person in front of the display looks away, YouTube videos get paused by the app. The API is experimental in nature and will ask you for permission before providing camera access to the extension.

Setting Up FacePause On Google Chrome (Integrated/Standalone Webcam Required)

• You need to enable the FaceDetector API for FacePause to work. You can do that by accessing the following address on your Google Chrome browser.
  

  Image Courtesy of Chrome

chrome://flags#enable-experimental-web-platform-features 

• Enable the “Experimental Web Platform Features” and click on Relaunch now to enable the API.
• Download and install the FacePause extension from the Chrome Web Store.
• If you do not have a webcam installed, plug it in and wait for the plug and play drivers to install.
• Once your webcam is ready for use, head to YouTube.
• Open any YouTube video that you want to test the feature on.
• A small box should appear on the bottom right corner of your Chrome tab that has a “Face Play Disabled” message accompanied by a toggle switch.
• Click on the Toggle switch on the bottom right corner, and it should turn green.
• Chrome will ask for webcam access near the browser search bar. Click “Allow” on the prompt.
• A small window will now pop up that will notify you if your face is being detected. If you see a green box around the window, your face is being detected. If you do not see the green window, it means the extension is unable to detect your face.
• If the extension is working, try looking away from the screen, and your YouTube video should automatically pause itself.

The extension does not work flawlessly and fails to detect faces properly. The developer has planned future updates to allow the app to function better over the coming weeks.