The playbackState property of the MediaSession interface indicates whether the current media session is playing or paused.
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MediaSession: playbackState property
Value
A string indicating the current playback state of the media session. The value may be one of the following:
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
| Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari | WebView Android | Chrome Android | Firefox for Android | Opera Android | Safari on IOS | Samsung Internet | |
| playbackState | 73 | 79 | 82 | No | 60 | 15 | No | 57 | 82Firefox exposes the API, but does not provide a corresponding user-facing media control interface. | 43 | 15 | 7.0 | 
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 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaSession/playbackState