Google Chrome can mute a tab.

Google Chrome can mute a tab.

You must have experienced this situation: when you are attending an important meeting, a browser tab on your computer starts to play audio ads. When you want to close this page, you find that too many pages are opened, and you do not know which one is making a sound.

Fortunately, Google added a feature in Chrome in 2014. The tab that is playing the sound will display a small horn on the tab, so that we can quickly find out which page is playing the sound. But Google thinks this is not enough, because you still have to switch to this tab, find the location of the video/audio player or advertisement, and then press the pause button. The latest Chrome browser (version 46) allows you to mute a tab. You only need to right-click the tab and select "mute" from the pop-up menu.

Google has tested this feature for about one year and is now open to all users.

To check your Chrome version, find the three dashes in the upper-right corner of the browser, click the icon, and select "about Google Chrome" in the pop-up menu ", on this page, you can see whether the browser is the latest version.

New features may be surprising, as Google once said they would not provide the feature of mute tabs, because they do not want the browser to control the content. Fran ois Beaufort, a veteran of Chrome browser engine, posted an explanation on Google + last year.

　　After some debate, we decided not to provide the tab mute function, because it crossed an important line: If we let Chrome browser control the content, it means Chrome needs to be responsible for illegal content.

Currently, users are very dissatisfied with unfriendly webpages such as sudden playback of sound (this is natural), but they should put pressure on the website to change this approach. At the same time, some people also pointed out that there is a way to mute-there is a button on the right of the horn icon (that is, the tab is turned off ). Seriously, many web pages use the "onClose ()" event to monitor the time when users leave the website. In this way, closing the web page is a strong signal for these websites. The annoying advertisements on their pages have begun to scare away visitors.

For formal content, we believe that users can completely switch to the corresponding tab and stop playing on the player interface. In this way, the tag mute function of Chrome is redundant, which may also affect users. For example, if you want to play a video but forget that the tab is muted a few days ago. Based on experience, such users often report improper operations as program vulnerabilities to us, which is a great disturbance to customer service and engineers.

However, Google does not oppose Chrome's extended tab mute if it has been evaluated and approved by the Chromiun team. Currently, there are some extensions in the Chrome App Store, such as "tab mute shortcut" and "mute inactive tab.

However, Chrome has changed its attitude, so now we can use a simple click to mute a tab.