Mute sound in Firefox tabs

Revision Information
  • Revision id: 108278
  • Created:
  • Creator: Wesley Branton
  • Comment: Added section about disabling
  • Reviewed: Yes
  • Reviewed:
  • Reviewed by: heyjoni
  • Is approved? No
  • Is current revision? No
  • Ready for localization: No
Revision Source
Revision Content
Please update your version of Firefox for the latest features and security updates.

Firefox lets you identify noisy tabs and mute them in a single click. Silence tabs quickly without affecting your other windows.

When sound starts playing on a webpage, Firefox lets you know where it's coming from by displaying a speaker button in the tab:

speaker tab 42

Clicking the speaker button will turn the sound off or on for that tab alone:

Mute a tab

  1. Click the speaker button to turn off the sound for that tab.
    speaker tab 42
  2. A line will appear over the button to let you know that the sound is off:
    audio off tab 42

Unmute a tab

  1. Click the speaker button again to turn the sound back on.
    tab mute 42
  2. The line over the button will disappear to let you know that the sound is on.
    audio on tab 42
Keyboard shortcut: To mute or unmute a tab without a mouse, you can also press Ctrl + M while on the tab.

Disable feature

If you would like to disable the speaker button, please do the following:

  1. Type about:config into the Firefox address bar and press enter
  2. Click the I'll be careful, I promise button
  3. Search for browser.tabs.showAudioPlayingIcon using the search bar on the page
  4. Set the boolean value of this string to false by double clicking the preference
  5. Close the configuration page

You can enable this feature again at any time. To do so, simply follow the above steps and set the boolean value to true.

In some cases, you may need to restart Firefox before the changes will take effect.