Muting Audio from a Chrome Tab

If you are like me, you often have many tabs open at one time in Chrome.  While I love having the ability to multitask, there are times when I will be working in a tab and one of the other tabs will automatically start playing an ad or a video.  Because I have so many tabs open at one time, it can be time consuming to hunt for the offending video-playing tab.  

Search no more.  Google has created an experimental function to allow you to mute the audio on a tab.  

Google Chrome indicates when a audio is playing in a tab by a speaker icon on the tab.  When audio starts playing in your browser, you can look for this icon in your tabs, click on the tab, and you usually can stop the video fairly quickly.  However, sometimes, the playing video can be difficult to find.

Chrome Function to Enable Tab Audio Muting

To enable Tab audio muting, type

chrome://flags/#enable-tab-audio-muting

in your omnibar (as below).

The page below will appear:

Click on the Enable link under the Yellow highlighted words Enable tab audio muting UI control.  This will change the enable the functionality and the link will change to Disable (as below).

In order for the audio muting to work in Chrome, you need to restart chrome.  Do this by typing Chrome://restart in the omnibox.

Once Chrome restarts, you will be able to turn off the audio on a tab by clicking on the speaker icon.  

Turned off audio will be indicated by a red circle with a line drawn through it (as below).