Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog: Mute the Darn Browser

Mute the Darn Browser

I've blogged about my desire to have a mute button for browsers before. Nothing bugs me more than to have some silly web site play music while my iTunes is playing an mp3. Most of the offenders are Flash apps... and while many have a button to turn sound off, I wish there was a way to simply tell the browser to not let sound out.

Turns out there is a way - kinda. This blog post mentions how you can use AdBlock to stop certain kinds of media files. I don't think this will work for Flash apps though. I'll have to find one to test with...

This entry was posted on Friday, April 22, 2005 at 4:26 PM. It was filed in the following categories: Development. It has been viewed 20,379 times and has 40 comments.

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Comment 1 written by Ryan Guill on 22 April 2005, at 6:25 PM

ray, if you get your mac you can get this
http://rogueamoeba.com/detour/
Comment 2 written by Critter on 22 April 2005, at 6:31 PM

there is a flashblock extension out there too...
Comment 3 written by Trond Ulseth on 23 April 2005, at 7:15 AM

What browser are you on Ray? Both IE and Opera have options for turning of sound. FF does not as far as I know.
Comment 4 written by Trond Ulseth on 23 April 2005, at 7:20 AM

Ops - the "turn off sound" option in IE and Opera does not stop Flash sound. And since Flash is the main problem it does not help much.

Then some Flash ad-block program must be the solution.
Comment 5 written by Raymond Camden on 23 April 2005, at 8:45 AM

I use Firefox, and Trond is right, it's mostly Flash. I don't want to use a Flash-block as I actually like Flash.
Comment 6 written by John Farrar on 23 April 2005, at 9:02 AM

Here's a tech tip... the mute button is on your keyboard in many of the new keyboards. You can also go into Configuration pannel and put the volume on your system bar. Then you can turn off sound also.

What program do you know of that has a mute on it like you are asking for anyway? Powerpoint? Word? Wordperfect? I know there are some programs that have volume control. The feature is nice... but to win this battle you are going to have to sell a major browser on it. (And if I am right Flash doesn't "channel" it's sound through the browser. It would require a new version of flash just to respond. This means old versions wouldn't respond.)
Comment 7 written by Raymond Camden on 23 April 2005, at 9:15 AM

John: I'm not trying to mute the OS - just the application. All media players typically have a mute button that only affect themselves. A browser isn't a media player per se - but it does play embedded media, so I don't think it is as far fetched as having a mute button MS Word. If indeed Flash's audio bypasses the browser itself, then I'd love to see Flash 8 have a way to block audio.
Comment 8 written by John Farrar on 23 April 2005, at 10:09 AM

A browser is no more a media player than windows. Flash is a player more in the sense of direct X or an active x component than say Real Player or something like that. Neither one is actually a "media player" (that is neither flash or the browser). What you need is to get all the people writting flash productions to give you a mute button. There would not be a default button specific to the browser because the browser doesn't "detect" that audio is running inside a plugin. What you want would require the plugin to check with the browser to know if the user wanted it to play audio. Since the feature doesn't currently exist... even if the browser added the application messaging to allow for that... only newer plugins could respond to it. You will have to conquer the browser companies and all the media companies at the same time. (For directly executed audio files this would work... but not for plugins.)
Comment 9 written by Raymond Camden on 23 April 2005, at 10:37 AM

Well geeze, I can still wish can't I? ;) I don't think it is unreasonable to say that if an app allows for sound to come out - whether it is an plugin in the app or the app itself - that there should be a way of preventing it. Opera manages to do it (supposedly, I haven't actually tested it), so Firefox could try it as well. It could, for example, prevent sounds from _non_ plugin sources.
Comment 10 written by jim on 23 April 2005, at 1:13 PM

Yet another reason to dislike flash.
Comment 11 written by PaulC on 23 April 2005, at 5:13 PM

Flash 8 should have a contextual "mute movie" option.
Comment 12 written by John Farrar on 25 April 2005, at 8:56 AM

It may be possible on the Mac or Linux... though not likely. The point is that the plug ins are talking to the Operating System. The browser is just the container where they run. I would be careful with the features you are asking for... they are (my belief) talking to the OS and to change those features is to ask the browser to start controlling the OS based on current design. The mute button on your laptop is a much safer approach since it won't cause dll conflicts in windows.

PLEASE NOTE: I share your wish... and thought it through deeply. That doesn't mean I am 100% right. You know there could be a hidden feature that was never implemented that we do not know about! It would indeed be a nice feature.
Comment 13 written by John Farrar on 25 April 2005, at 8:58 AM

P.S.
To the author who said "Yet another reason to dislike flash."... this is a plugin issue. It exists with all plugins. The problem isn't flash. It's lack of foresight in designing the browser and the plugins. (Someone should sue the guy who claims to be responsible for plugins. He seems to want to take all the credit, give it to him. HA!)
Comment 14 written by delfin on 25 April 2005, at 4:47 PM

I guess we should recommend flash designers to insert a PLAY button, and NOT a STOP button...
Comment 15 written by kokot on 31 July 2005, at 12:33 PM

i use FlashMute, little tray app for windows, works booth with IE and FF
Comment 16 written by josh Richards on 26 August 2005, at 4:00 AM

hey ray.

this is exactly what i want:
a per-browser window mute button.
i want all inherited pop-up windows to assume the same volume status.
i want a default volume setting [choices: muted, user selected slider value, system volume setting (default)]
i want to be able to click a system-like, volume-widget icon at the bottom of the window bar to adjust the volume.

bonus: if muted i would like the sound icon to flash or strobe when the page is playing/making sound

this would make me and many many others very happy.
anyone up to the challenge to code this?
Comment 17 written by David Renfro on 3 May 2006, at 1:55 AM

Indie Volume is a PC program for muting ANY runnign process, including IE, FirFox etc....

http://www.indievolume.com/?reseller=s200031097
Comment 18 written by bogweasel on 3 June 2006, at 4:27 PM

Try flashmute at
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/flashmute.html
seems to do the job in Firefox
Comment 19 written by rdragon on 3 July 2006, at 2:53 PM

i totally understand what youre saying. yes a browser is a media player. it displays media! media is defined as images, movies, audio, music, written information. its all media, and all a browser does is display that media. some sites have sound with no controls whatesoever, even when it isnt a flash site. you can embed midi files into a site and there is no way to shut it up (besides modifying settings for that particular site)

i like to play flash games while using winamp to listen to music, but some flash games dont have a mute button. why cant the browser window have a mute button like every other media player? at least a plugin to do something like that.

the guys above are wrong. plugins dont interface with the os driectly. they interface with the os THROUGH the browser, hence browser plugin, not standalone program.

simply put, the browser passes the audio data to the os's sound drivers. there should be a way to stop that.
Comment 20 written by rDr4g0n on 5 July 2006, at 9:53 AM

in case anyone is interested, i found a site with buttons for opera to mute the browser. http://www.aimwell.org/Help/Buttons/buttons.html just drag and drop the button onto your toolbar and it works!
Comment 21 written by decompyler on 6 July 2006, at 12:17 PM

Agreed! I've been complaining about this for years. A browser mute button would be a breath of freash air for days I play music for my office. I really don't see why this is a difficult concept for some people. Muting the app at its base level is a no brainer in functional usability.
Comment 22 written by George on 12 August 2006, at 7:50 PM

FLASHMUTE WORKED!

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!

How to mute your browser and turn off annoying flash and web page sound:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/flashmute.html

After it installs it puts an icon in the system tray. I right clicked on it and chose settings/Mute whole browser.

Thank you!
Comment 23 written by Eric on 31 August 2006, at 4:05 PM

Does anyone know of a flashmute equivalent for the mac? It's a lifesaver on my PC at work, but I would love to get a mute button for my mac at home.
Comment 24 written by Mike on 9 September 2006, at 10:07 PM

Good news, for Windows Vista, they are releasing per-application volume control.
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/1...
Comment 25 written by Peter on 19 September 2006, at 10:59 AM

For those Mac users out there, I found an app called Detour that will do the job.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/...

It allows you to control volume on an application-by-application basis. Enjoy!
Comment 26 written by SicKn3sS on 22 October 2006, at 3:29 PM

OMFG THANKS! I just found this site on google.
flash mute pwns :O
Comment 27 written by Brian on 6 December 2006, at 8:17 AM

My thanks go to Einar Stangvik for producing FlashMute.

I really think that someone should reverse engineer Flash and write a version with mute in place though - nobody needs another application in the taskbar. Personally I'm all for boycotting flash, but what happens when you really need to get info from a site using it?

In fact Adobe should be boycotted full stop! They seem offer products that nobody wants but everybody has to have because of their widespread use.
Comment 28 written by Raymond Camden on 6 December 2006, at 8:39 AM

Brian:

I am obviously biased but I think you are very wrong in your assessment of Adobe products. I _do_ agree Flash should be mutable, but that doesn't make the entire product, nor their entire product line, bad. I make my living off of Adobe products as do millions of other people. And to be fair - Adobe doesn't force you to use sound in Flash. Developers choose to do this.
Comment 29 written by dave on 6 December 2006, at 7:43 PM

Is it possible to also 'mute' that is, to stop the flash movies from playing also? The constant moving images are a major annoyance.
Comment 30 written by Raymond Camden on 6 December 2006, at 7:51 PM

Look for the FlashBlock Firefox extension.
Comment 31 written by Claire on 25 December 2006, at 8:06 AM

Hurrah! Finally I can waste more time playing tetris without noise. Cheers.
Comment 32 written by LL on 9 March 2007, at 12:34 PM

a mute button on firefox would be great to muta all sound...
not fun when booming mp3 from the comp on the stereo system and then some stupid sound from some webpage mixes in to... scares the hell out of u
Comment 33 written by mafiasam on 5 May 2007, at 9:07 PM

http://www.indievolume.com/

looks like that will do the trick for everyone
Comment 34 written by Ray on 12 May 2007, at 6:02 AM

thank god for flashmute. I have a trucking website i need to check tracking numbers at and it plays a truck horn in flash. Its nice at 10 am to check your tracking with your speakers on full and get the **** scared out of you. I have been looking for this app for a long time.

lol
Comment 35 written by Dirk on 20 August 2007, at 8:53 AM

None of these programs work with an Intel Based Mac.

Though I am sure I will never get a response, if someone does know of any applications that do this, I would really love to know.

Thanks.
Comment 36 written by Olden on 6 February 2008, at 12:53 PM

What would be ideal is if a plugin could be configured so that only the sound coming from the active tab in Firefox is heard and all other tabs are muted. When you switch from one tab to another, only the sound in the active tab is heard.

Too bad this is so difficult to implement within the browser only.
Comment 37 written by TC -Helper on 5 March 2008, at 4:26 PM

Hey look for everyone here just download FlashMute from download.com it's safe and it does exactly what you want it to do. i can't believe soooo many ppl don't know about this it's perfect. I"m actually playing flash games right now and listing to itunes and windows media player. FLASHMUTE at DOWNLOAD.COM
Comment 38 written by TC - Helper on 5 March 2008, at 4:28 PM

www.download.com is all safe unlike so other many other ones so I prefer this one.
Comment 39 written by Mike on 11 September 2008, at 7:10 AM

If you're on Vista you don't need an extra program. The shiny OS can mute any running program: Open volume control --> Mixer, there you go.
Comment 40 written by Mile 77 on 16 February 2009, at 2:11 PM

The best solution I've found for this is via Audio Hijack Pro.
http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/
The unregistered version has no limitations (unless you plan to use the recording feature for more than 10 straight minutes after your trial period is up.)
Just open it up, select Firefox as the application, click "Hijack", and then hit "Mute" right next to it. It will mute ONLY the application you have it set on, nothing else.
Works perfectly.