Do you often encounter websites that automatically play videos and sounds without your permission in your browser tabs? Do you find them as annoying as we do so that you want to mute them immediately and get back to what you were doing? You’ve come to the right place. In order to stop unwanted audio in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Opera, we wrote a guide.
Fortunately, you only have to click one or two buttons on any modern browser, and some of them even offer keyboard shortcuts so you can do it quickly. Check out the following tips to find out how the best built-in features in your favorite browsers can mute your tabs:
Why mute an individual tab?
When you want to mute just a specific Google Meet tab without interrupting all other Google Meet sessions, you might need to mute a single tab. However, in the media player in the browser, one can always pause and muffle a particular video or live stream. Although it’s more efficient and quick than directly muting tabs from the main interface, it’s not as seamless.
Chrome offers two extensions to mute a specific tab, Tab Muter and Mute Tab. These two extensions recreate the functionality of Chrome’s Mute Tab.
Mute a Tab in Google Chrome
If you are on a website that plays videos automatically, go to the top of the current tab, right-click, and select “Mute site.” This will turn the audio off even if your computer’s speakers are on.
As soon as the video has been muted, you can watch it with subtitles or pause it if you only want to read the web content. You can choose “unmute site” from the same corner if you’re going to hear the audio again.
For a more permanent solution, you can mute all sites that play sound in Google Chrome. The Additional Content Settings can be found in “Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Site Settings -> Additional Content Settings.”
You can damp sites that play sounds or allow exceptions for a few news, gaming, and entertainment sites.
Using Tab Muter in Chrome, you can mute an individual tab
- Chrome Web Store and install the Tab Muter extension.
- Tab Muter can be added to the toolbar by clicking “Pin” in the Extensions menu after being installed on Google Chrome.
- The speaker icon will now appear on the toolbar of your browser.
- Tab Muter allows you to mute a tab by clicking the “Mute tab” icon for the tab you want to mute. In this case, you will see a mute icon instead of a speaker icon on the muted tab.
- By clicking it again, you can unmute the tab.
Mute a Tab using the Keyboard
If you use shortcut keys, you can mute specific tabs or completely mute all open tabs. Chrome Key Shortcuts to Mute Tab
- You can mute all tabs in the current window by pressing Alt + Shift +,
- Using Alt + Shift + M, you can mute or unmute only the selected tab.
- To mute all tabs except the current one, press Alt + Shift + N.
Mute Individual Browser Tabs in Apple Safari
Using Safari on a Mac, you can mute the audio in any open tab. Find the tiny Audio button on the right side of the Smart search field or the tab bar to muffle the tab. The screen below shows Safari 12 on macOS Mojave. On Big Sur, the audio button is located in a similar location to Safari 14.1’s.
You can also right-click on the audio icon to mute the tab from there. You can use this option if you have several tabs open and want to mute all of them. You can unmute the sounds at any time by clicking the muted Audio button.
Mute Individual Browser Tabs in Microsoft Edge
Changing tabs in the old version of Microsoft Edge required adjusting Windows’ sound settings. Because Edge is based on Chrome, you can mute tabs the same way you can mute tabs on a Windows PC, Mac, Linux computer, or Chromebook.
Open a tab in Microsoft Edge as described above. Select “Mute Tab” from the drop-down context menu when you right-click the tab. The music and sounds will no longer be audible.
Mute Tab in Opera
Opera uses a small animation of a stereo visualizer to identify tabs playing audio, unlike other popular internet browsers that use a static speaker icon.
Please hover your mouse over the animated speaker icon to turn it into the familiar static speaker icon, and click it to mute audio in an Opera tab.
Opera also allows you to mute a tab by right-clicking it and selecting Mute Tab.
Mute Tab in Firefox
With Firefox, autoplay videos are dealt with in one of the strictest ways. You can disable the audio from the top tab as with other browsers by selecting “mute tab.” Unmuting is done from the exact location.
Choose “Autoplay Settings” from “Preferences -> Privacy.”
You can set the default for all websites to block audio and video and allow audio and video for specific websites.
Mute a Browser Tab in Brave
Similar to the previously mentioned browsers, the cryptocurrency and privacy-focused browser, Brave, lets you mute tabs easily.
Click the speaker icon that appears when the tab is making a sound.
Alternatively, you can right-click the tab and select the Mute tab from the pop-up menu.
In Brave, tabs can be muted without switching to them. However, the browser renders full-screen previews of tabs when you hover your mouse over them, which can be jarring. As a result, you may want to switch to another tab before muting to avoid the distracting tab preview.
Mute a Tab on Phone
By going to Settings > Site settings, you can access the new Sound menu, which allows you to mute sites from playing audio. By default, the unique setting is enabled; however, you can disable it or add some exceptions from the new Sound menu.