Tab Muter

Though beloved by many, the world’s most popular web browser, Google Chrome, at times has difficulty deciding what functionalities best suit its users. Ever since the Chrome 71 update, many were disappointed to see the “Mute tab” function replaced with the “Mute site” option, which isn’t exactly the same.

Gone is the speaker icon in the tab title; you now have to so very time-consumingly righ-click (oh, those agonizing milliseconds!) on the tab to get to the “Mute site” option, which is nowhere near as useful. So leave it to the extension developers to deliver us from a life without tab muting (hell!).

Tab Muter isn’t the first extension to re-enable Chrome to mute tabs, nor will it be the last until the browser introduces something similar to tab muting. Those of you with flag-enabling knowledge might already know of the (as of now) experimental “Manage audio focus across tabs” setting, that allows Chrome to automatically mute tabs in the background.

But for the rest of us who don’t bother with Google Chrome flags, or who want a more reliable functionality, Tab Muter is a more stable option. It does exactly what it says and works just fine.

Like any Chrome extension, Tab Muter will appear in the top-right corner of your browser, and will somehow look like it belongs there. You even have the option to switch the Icon color from dark to light.

Now, due to Chrome’s limits on its Application Programming Interface (API), no extension dev will be able to change the way a tab title works; so, no, you won’t be able to mute tabs like before, just by clicking the volume icon on the tab title. But since Chrome has kept the volume icon for tab titles (telling you which tab is playing sound), muting tabs with Tab Muter should be a quick process.