Tech giant Google has been experimenting with a feature that lets users mute unwanted audio from playing in individual Chrome tabs for quite some time. If you’re on Windows or Mac, then Google Chrome should update automatically for you. So you have probably seen this latest option in action already. When you right-click, it’s fifth in the queue below New tab, Reload, Duplicate and Pin tab.
It was only back in 2014 that Google introduced a speaker icon in Chrome to indicate which tabs are playing those annoying audio bits. The latest tweak to mute particular tabs is a welcome addition; a much needed flourish to enhance the usefulness of last year’s change. A lot of websites have auto-play video ads and then there are those which have music playing in the background but no discernible way to make it pipe down.
Now you don’t need to go to the noisy tab in question and shut it down. From wherever you are on Google Chrome, you can simply hover over a tab and right-click to see the list containing the option to mute it. It’s quite brilliant, though a bit late in arriving. Seeing as Mozilla has yet to bring something similar to Firefox however, we should probably not be complaining.
The browser is refreshed to the latest build in the background when you close and reopen it. In any case, Google notifies users about any pending updates by flashing the Menu icon within Chrome in green, orange or red, depending on how long it’s been sitting there and waiting for you. For those who want to stop auto-updates, there’s a long-winded way to do so.
Prior to this, using a browser add-on or extension was the only way you could mute tabs in Google Chrome without breaking a sweat.