How to Mute a Tab in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera & Microsoft Edge?

how to mute a tab
how to mute a tab

Wants to know how to mute a tab in all kinds of browsers? There are many causes for wanting to mute a tab in your favorite browser. Possibly you’re opening up multiple tabs, and one of them auto-plays an ad? It’s so loud it startles you and quite possibly the neighbors, so you frantically decide to locate which tab it’s playing in. You get so frustrated that you begin closing them all one by one until the sound finally dies out.

This sort of thing can get irritating fast. Thankfully, modern desktop web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox have given you the power to remove such irritants without taking up precious time and sanity. Let us explain you how to mute a tab in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and other browsers.

how to mute a tab in chrome
how to mute a tab in chrome

How to Mute a Tab in Chrome, Safari & Mozilla 

First thing’s first, you’ll require to know how to identify which tab is the one attempting to blow out your eardrum. The culprit tab can quickly be determined by the one with a speaker icon on it.

All you require to do is look for this icon, and you’ll know which tab to navigate to. Now, all that’s left is to put a stop to its reign of audial fear without outright killing the tab itself.

how to mute a chrome tab
how to mute a chrome tab

Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, & Brave 

These three browsers all have a similar way on how to mute a browser tab. Each one will show that speaker icon inside the tab itself. All you have to do to stop the noise is hit the icon in the tab. It will go from a normal-looking volume symbol into one with a slash across it, indicating the tab is muted.

If for some reason, the icon is too small for you, or you try to click it but keep hitting the X so close to the right of it by accident, there is another way for muting a tab. You can right-hit the tab to pull up a short menu. Locate the option for the Mute tab and click it. Problem solved.

Google Chrome and Brave share that Firefox does not can mute all tabs from a particular site right there in the tab. You’ll find Mute Site in the same menu, which will do as it tells but for all tabs from that site now and in the future.

All three of these fantastic browsers also boast an auto-mute specialty. This indicates that you can set it up so that annoying ads with blaring music and sounds are automatically muted. The feature to mute a tab in Chrome and other browsers enables you to put together a whitelist of sites that cannot auto-play sounds.

Google Chrome and Brave auto-mute feature can be detected by navigating through Settings > Additional Settings > Privacy and security > Site Settings (or Content Settings) > Sound. You can then start adding sites you no longer want to auto-play sounds.

Firefox takes a related but shorter path. Navigate to Options > Privacy and Security >Autoplay. From here, you can change the option in the drop-down menu to Block Audio and begin uniting websites to the whitelist.

Apple Safari & Opera

Muting a browser tab in Safari and Opera is related to the browsers mentioned earlier. You can locate the volume icon and click it or right-click the tab and pick Mute Tab. Where they vary is that Safari also features an active tab Mute This Tab option. A speaker icon can be seen in the location bar that you can toggle to mute the tab you’re on.

When right-clicking a tab in Opera, you’re provided a chance to Mute other tabs. This feature can be convenient if you’re focused on a single browser tab and would like to bypass being annoyed by other tabs that may feature an auto-play ad.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge is the outlier in this article. It does have the volume icon to let you know a tab is playing sound, but unlike the rest of the browsers, it has no direct route to mute a browser tab.

Instead, you’ll have to right-click the speaker icon in the notification field at the bottom right corner of your screen and select Open Volume Mixer.

Then you’ll require to locate the Edge browser tab playing the sound. Once found, hit the speaker icon below the name of the page to mute it. Unmuting will ask that you either redo this process repeatedly or close and reopen the tab.

Until Microsoft gets around to bringing their browser, the only other point you can do is use a different browser or put an end to sound altogether.

To disable sounds from playing indefinitely rather than turning each one off individually, you can prevent Edge from playing any sounds whatsoever.

  • Go to your Control Panel.
  • Hit on Internet Options.
  • Straight into the Advanced tab and scroll down to the Multimedia section.
  • Uncheck the box labeled Play sounds in webpages.

To allow sounds once again, you’ll have to follow the same moves to place the checkmark back in the box besides Play sounds in webpages.

FAQs

Q: How do I mute a tab in Windows 10 system?

A: You can either hit the Audio icon on a tab or right-click on the tab or select the Mute tab.

Q: What is the keyboard shortcut to mute?

A: Applying CTRL+SHIFT+M will activate the Mute Volume shortcut and will mute your system volume.

Q: How do I mute my zoom keyboard?

A: Command + Shift + A: Mute/unmute my audio. Command + Shift + V: Start/stop my video. Command + Shift + H: Display/hide chat.

Q: How do you mute a game?

A: If you need to turn off game sounds, tap on any game you want and start it. You will find an II symbol on the top left side, which will stop the game. Once you click on it, a menu will look (Restart, Help, etc.). At the very bottom, you’ll find the option to turn the sound on and off.