If you go to a web page and it starts playing audio without you pushing the Play button, thatâs auto play1. It plays audio or video automatically, without you requesting it.
In my opinion, this type of auto play is evil. There are so many reasons why it shouldnât be used, from startling the user to waking up the baby in the next room. Itâs simply bad user design and downright rude. Web pages should not make sound until the user requests it. If youâre a website designer and you use auto play sound, stop it.
Unfortunately, if youâre not the web designer, thereâs not a lot you can do.
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Managing tabs
As youâve found, thereâs no easy way to determine which of the tabs is actually generating the output.
My first suggestion is donât open several tabs at once. Start one at a time. Then, give it a few seconds after youâve started each tab to see which one starts playing music and then close it.
Conversely, if you have to load a bunch, shut them down one by one to see which causes the music to go away.
Hit Mute
When something like this happens to me, my hand will fly to the Mute button on my keyboard. Thatâs the only other suggestion that I have for you. Immediately hit Mute and either decide whether you want to figure out which tab is the culprit or just live with your computer not playing any sound for a while.
Thatâs the only real approach that I know. Suffice it to say that Iâve been in your shoes. Iâd love to have an answer for you, but I just donât know of a way to stop auto play on web pages, or identify which of many open tabs might be the culprit..
Running the NoScript add in stops this a lot of the time. You have to give the site permission to run JavaScript before it can use it.
Even worse to me than auto playing audio is pages that auto play a video. This is especially annoying when on a metered internet connection if itâs on one of many tabs just opened. And itâs just plain rude as I want to choose when I view a video, and it may not be at the moment I open the page on a tab.
WowâI do hate these auto runs. Ronny, where do I get this âNo Scriptâ?
âNoScriptâ is a Firefox (my favorite browser) Add-on. If you use Firefox, just go to Tools, Add-Ons, then search for NoScript. Chrome has a similar plug-in called âNotScripts.â I donât think thereâs anything like this for IE. I highly recommend Firefox over IE. And while youâre at it, take a look at my two other favorite Add-ons, âDownload Statusbarâ and âMy Homepage.â Of course, I always have Xmarks and LastPass installed.
NoScript link
I couldnât agree more, especially when there are two or three paying all at once! Nightmare! And yes Ned Reiter, I agree it is rude and annoying to not have the choice to watch a video, and what a cacophony when they are playing along with multiple music files! Another annoying practice is when I want to watch news videos I have to watch a minute of ads theyâve tacked to the start of each segment. Mute cup uts the noise but Iâm still paying for downloads I donât want.
Iâve started catching up on missed episodes of my favourite TV shows online. The ads annoy me too. Iâve spent a lot of time on the one or two TV network websites looking at the source code for the TV shows episodes. I found the ad server and add it to my Hosts file. Now I can watch those missed episodes without any commercials. Itâs great!
In Chrome, go to:
Settings â content â settings â plug ins â click to play
Wonderful thing, you go to any tab and see the content greyed out. If you click on it it will play.
Use the Flash-block add on. That way the flash audio/video wonât play unless you click on it.
Worth noting that Chrome shows a little speaker on any tab that is currently playing sound, so you can visually identify which tabs are playing sound very easily.
Itâs probably the easiest way of answering the âwhich tabâ question!
Yes. Iâve noticed that new feature on Chrome. Itâs very useful.
Couple of other folk have already commented on this regarding Chrome, but some browsers â including Firefox as well â show which tab is playing sound with a little speaker symbol. Might want to update the article to mention that, and which browsers have the feature. Donât know when it was introduced, but itâs been *massively* useful since I noticed it.
Both Firefox and Chrome now show a speaker icon when a tab is playing sound. If you click on the icon in Firefox, the sound is muted.