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Chrome Will Soon Let You Permanently Mute Websites (androidpolice.com)

Google Chrome will soon allow users to permanently mute websites, a feature that will cheer millions who suffer through autoplaying videos on (annoying) websites every day. From a report: According to Google's Francois Beaufort, the Chrome team is still experimenting with this feature. In the early version, the sound toggle is in the page info popup, which you can access by clicking on the far left of the address bar. That's either an info icon or a "Secure" label for sites that have HTTPS enabled. There are already various toggles in there now for things like Flash, JavaScript, notifications, and so on. Soon, a sound toggle will be added that works in the same way. Sites on which you disable sound will remain that way until you turn them back on.

12 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Permanent audio blacklist? by Hadlock · · Score: 3

    This is amazing if it's true. I hate visiting a news site to read a particular article, and some live news feed, or the video version of the article starts playing. I think that within a month I'll have blacklisted 99% of the offending sites and won't have to browse with my computer's audio muted anymore. What a time to be alive!

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  2. Not good enough by DeHackEd · · Score: 3

    Muting's not good enough. As someone with a slow(-ish) internet connection with a meter on it, why am I being forced to download and play a video I clearly don't want?

    1. Re:Not good enough by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My favorite is when the site throws an autoplaying video at you, you stop it, then you scroll down to read whatever you wanted to read, and the video resizes and moves to the bottom right corner, following you as you scroll down the page. And of course it'll start playing again when it feels like it.

  3. Re:Finally by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But why should I have to mute each site individually? Why can't "no autoplay sound" be turned off globally? I never want any site to autoplay (either audio or video). There used to be plugins that disable autoplay, but apparently none of them work anymore because Google changed Chrome to intentionally break them, which seems ... evil.

  4. So weird by PingSpike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This topic of auto play video nightmares comes up all the time. Very annoying stuff I agree. But apparently everyone has just been suffering with it by the comments I always see.

    I installed Flash Control https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... forever ago and never see them. Despite its name, it blocks HTML5 videos as well. Everything is click to play, as it should be. I whitelist youtube and moved on with my life. Are others not aware of these kinds of extensions?

    This chrome addition is nice and everything...but auto-muted videos are presumably still loading, using cpu time and bandwidth.

  5. Re:Finally by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But why should I have to mute each site individually? Why can't "no autoplay sound" be turned off globally? I never want any site to autoplay (either audio or video). There used to be plugins that disable autoplay, but apparently none of them work anymore because Google changed Chrome to intentionally break them, which seems ... evil.

    Mute Chrome in your OS?

  6. Re:change the default...opt in to sound, not opt o by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Funny

    That said, just being able to mute CNN.com would be a big win. I'd like to kill their autoplay videos entirely for bandwidth reasons, but at least I'll be able to look at their website now while listening to other things in the background without their stupid autoplay video crap forcing itself upon my ears.

    But you will be missing out on CNN - The Most Trusted Name In News...

  7. Thank you! by ngc5194 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    THANK YOU! The current crop of ads is taking us in a direction which is in danger of making the web unusable. I realize that ads are necessary to pay for content, and I'm not opposed to that, but autoplay and scripting in these ads is evil. The memory and processing power web browsers consume, largely in powering these ads, is truly insane. If I see an autoplay ad for a product I buy, I stop buying it. If a web site insists on showing me ads that consume a boat load of my system memory, I stop visiting that site. This war of escalation for our attention has gotten out of hand. The only way to put the brakes on this is to make the most egregious offenders realize that their participation in this war is unprofitable.

  8. Fixing the wrong problem. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What I want is a way to DISABLE AUTOPLAY in the first place. Not have the video start playing, but with the sound muted. I don't want the video sucking up my bandwidth in the first place.

    Why can I not get a "just don't autoplay videos" toggle? Or, better, a "only autoplay videos from these specific sites" whitelist? Why should I need an extension to get what seems like obvious functionality that should be in the core app? Any why, when the core app developers decide to address the issue, do they address the wrong thing?

  9. Re:Finally by taustin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't care who is at fault, there is fault. If a web site doesn't work for shit, it doesn't work for shit.

  10. Do it the other way around by Solandri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sites on which you disable sound will remain that way until you turn them back on.

    No, do it the other way. Let me disable sound on all sites unless I opt to enable it for a specific site. That way I'm not playing whack-a-mole with a million random websites I might one day click. Instead I only get sound on the few dozen websites I frequent which need sound, and the occasional random site I visit where I want sound I can temporarily turn it on.

  11. Maybe half a "solution" by markdavis · · Score: 3

    >"Google Chrome will soon allow users to permanently mute websites, a feature that will cheer millions who suffer through autoplaying videos on (annoying) websites every day"

    Sorry, but audio is not the only problem. Let us know when AUTOPLAY OF THE VIDEOS (and even stupid animations) can also be "permanently" disabled. Having a video play is almost as annoying as the audio that goes with it. Many of us can't read or tolerate looking at sites that constantly move and spin and fade... it is beyond severely distracting. And now sites take their F'ing autoplaying videos and MOVE THEM DOWN THE SCREEN TO FOLLOW YOU, just to maximize the annoyance, waste screen space, and cover things you want to see.

    At least Firefox + FlashStopper is a HUGE help (despite the name, it has nothing to do with Flash), although it does nothing for non-video animation.