MuteTab

June 2016 update: MuteTab now mutes, knows when tabs are playing sound, and includes new features such as showing only recently noisy tabs, mute by default, and blacklists.

The extension was first released in 2011 as an experiment in providing browsers with a better sound management experience given limitations imposed by Chrome and Flash. This latest version fixes previous functionality and adds new features thanks to work done since then that gave Chrome audio indicators and tab muting and made that accessible to extensions.

MuteTab's features include:

* Shows only tabs that are playing sound now or did so recently. This is great if you have a large number of tabs open, they span across windows, or you want help identifying what was playing sound.
* Mute all tabs, background tabs, or incognito tabs by default.
* Buttons and keyboard shortcuts to mute all tabs, mute background tabs, and unmute all tabs.
* Set exceptions to muting behavior via whitelists and blacklists.
* Add your music player to a "music list" so that it gets excluded when muting all or background tabs.
* "Privacy mode" will mute all of your tabs (including your music) when you want silence; you can then unmute tabs you want to listen to. You can assign it to a keyboard shortcut, too.
* Disable automuting lets you temporarily disable all of the above behavior.
* See a count of noisy tabs you avoided hearing by hovering over the "MuteTab" text in the top left corner.
* Experimental "music ducking" feature will mute your music for you when you watch a video and unmute it afterward.

Note: Chrome made various changes since this was released. You need to either use this extension to mute/unmute or Chrome's mute site site feature and not both.

Recent Release History

6/26/2023 v3.0.11 - Remove request for unused tabCapture permission

8/5/2019 v3.0.10 - Remove unsafe-eval permission request

8/5/2017 v3.0.9 - Fix for previous fix to prevent extension from dying

7/23/2017 v3.0.8 - Added error checking that will hopefully prevent the extension from dying

5/19/2017 v3.0.7 - New keyboard shortcut available to mute background tabs and unmute the current tab

4/12/2017 v3.0.6 - Fixed a bug that prevents muting a whitelisted tab when opened in a new tab

3/19/2017 v3.0.5 - Mutes all/background tabs when settings are loaded if that is the muting behavior.

11/20/2016 v3.0.3 - Doesn't mute tab if mute background tabs is set and tab is dragged to different window.

11/20/2016 v3.0.2 - Made UI wider and left-aligning menu items on the bottom so the UI looks better at various resolutions. Let me know if butons get cut off (ideally with a screenshot) so I can make it wider if needed.

6/2016 v3.x