Here’s How to Turn on Chrome’s Mute Button for Obnoxious Audio Tabs

Say, for instance, if you have auto-playing ads that you can't find...
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One of the handiest features of Google Chrome is the speaker icon that appears on any tab playing audio, but sometimes the offending page widget does too good a job hiding itself, and you don’t want to just close the whole tab. Prepare to have your Internet experience revolutionized: You can easily change that icon to a functional mute button.

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All you have to do is click a button in Chrome’s hidden settings. You can navigate to the “Flags” settings page by putting “chrome://flags/#enable-tab-audio-muting” in the address bar. That’ll bring you right to the setting you’re looking for to ensure that your ears are never again affronted with repetitive ads for historically low mortgage rates.

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Click enable, restart your browser, and your eardrums are forever liberated! Now that little speaker icon will finally pull its weight. Just click it to mute.

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Fact: Dinosaurs are loud.

Google’s been reluctant to add such a feature officially, because they don’t want to be “policing content,” but now you know. And knowing is half the battle!

(via Gizmodo, image via Alex Berger)

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