AutoPause for Firefox

If you are one of the computer users that works with multiple opened tabs, then there are chances that you have already experienced the following situation: music is playing in a background tab and you navigate to another page that starts audio playback. The first impulse is to look for the tab that plays music to pause it, all while both audio sources run simultaneously. This can be a nightmare in a browser window with several tabs opened.   The AutoPause for Firefox add-on was designed exactly to avoid the resulting frustration and noise when there is more than one audio source active in the Firefox browser.

Installing AutoPause in Firefox is a matter of a click and, in no time, the extension becomes active. Nevertheless, unlike other Firefox add-ons, this one has no toolbar button and no configuration to go through. In fact, other than the default options for any add-on, namely turning it on and off and choosing whether to activate it in private Firefox windows, there are absolutely no settings to deal with. To put it another way, it is an add-on that runs in the background and requires no user intervention or configuration.

To test its functionality, you must load two different pages in two tabs, each having its audio source. For instance, you could load a video on YouTube in a new Firefox tab and let it play. Then, open a new tab and navigate to an Internet radio station. As soon as you hit the “Play” button on the latter, the YouTube video pauses and you will be able to hear the radio stream. The interesting thing is that if you close or pause the playback on the radio tab, the YouTube video is resumed automatically.

While it does not offer any control whatsoever, AutoPause is a handy add-on for those who often find themselves opening or pinning a large number of tabs in Firefox. It features a simple function: to block an audio source that plays in the background when a new audio sources starts playing in the currently opened tab.