Reviews & Comments of Clever Mute chrome extension

Does the opposite of what I was looking for but still works for what I needed, Yes there is a some sec of audio when a new tab is opened but that's no big deal. so far works well

was clever now not working as was

Installed this extension into Chrome v78.0. The toolbar icon color is poorly chosen for use when a dark theme is used in the web browser. The author should provide 2 icon themes: one for light theme in Chrome, and another for the dark theme in Chrome. This extension is supposed to popup an alert for when it detects a site wants to play sound. I never get that popup. When I go to chrome:extensions, click on Details for this extension, there is no link to Options, so no way for me to manually edit the white- and blacklists (and especially the blacklist due to poor GUI design of this extensions dialog). Alt-clicking on this extension's toolbar icon shows Options in the context menu, but Options is disabled (grayed out), so it has no user-configurable options. That means I can never add a site to a whitelist. I could never delete an accidentally blacklisted site (due to poor GUI design). And no means of editing those lists, either. This extension has not been updated in over an year. Back then Chrome was at version 69. Now it's up to version 78 (released). Perhaps Google changed something in one of those later 9 version of Chrome that disables the white/blacklisting options and popup alert functions in this extension, or the author removed that functionality but did not update the description his extension. Since there is no web site for this extension, there's no place for the author to list a release notes history on his versions. I tried restarting Chrome and disabled any other extensions dealing with tabs, sounds, or autoplay. Still no popup alert from this extension when visiting Youtube and selecting a video to play, so no choices regarding audio in the current tab session, to whitelist, or to blacklist (on closing its dialog). I was using Youtube to test, and maybe this extension won't work with that site. However, that does not explain the absence of Options (to show and edit white- and blacklists) when I look at the details of this extension and Options being disabled when right-clicking on its toolbar icon. I also noticed the muting is delayed. When I open a tab that plays audio, the audio starts playing and then this extension mutes the tab in about a second. Apparently it doesn't inspect the document on load to check for audio or video tags in the HTML code, and instead it waits until it detects sound actually playing. I hear a blurp of audio at 100% which can be quite loud for some videos, and why I wanted an auto-muter extension. Committing an action on closing or ignoring a dialog box is very improper GUI design. In this extension, it supposedly automatically blacklists a site if you close its dialog. The "X" close button should only perform THAT function: close the dialog. No action (whitelisting, blacklisting, Windows shutdown, exploding your computer, or whatever) should be performed on closing the dialog. That's behavior employed by scam, rogueware, and ransomware dialogs. If I want a site whitelisted, that should require a choice by me (which is the current case). If I want a site blacklisted, that should also a require a choice BY ME, and an overt choice to blacklist, not a covert function of closing the dialog. Uninstalled this extension. Will have to trial other choices.

The site may play a split second of audio before it is muted but after adding it to black list it doesn't happen again. Very easy to toggle on/off. Gives me the exact form of control over audio I was looking for, works out of the box. Great extension.

Plays a split second of audio before muting. And it turns out that it's impossible to mute individual tabs now in Chrome??

Funny, this extension "works", but only after several seconds of sound. THEN it mutes the site! To be effective, it needs to mute sound immediately, before any sound is heard.

I'm using this in Vivaldi browser which uses a fork of Chromium called Blink where you can't mute a tab until it has played audio so I had to try a few auto-mute extensions to find this one which is perfect for my needs. Despite lacking an options page where you would set either black- or whitelisting, it's still intuitive to whitelist whole domains. You'll often hear ~0.1s of audio before it mutes a tab, but it's definitely better than nothing. EDIT: Turns out this extension automatically re-mutes tabs once the volume drops below a certain threshold meaning it doesn't remember the correct unmute state. Annoying user experience when watching streams with occasional pauses. This is obviously Vivaldi's fault of course.

I like the app, but I find the notifications in the upper right hand corner very annoying and I wish there was a way to disable them.

Sweet, it works the way it should! Even Chrome 66 doesn't work the way people want it to. Glad this exists!

Thank you! Hopefully now, I can disable AdBlock Plus, and stop punishing decent websites because of the annoying, inconsiderate ones. I read your reply about the Chrome API, and all autoplay audio playing for a fraction of a second. One solution might be to have an "disable all audio" option, with a "popup notification if audio tries to play" option, with a right click "enable / disable audio" option. I just found your extension, read the reviews, and your replies, and it seems to be best option for what I want, with a little room for improvement. Thanks for the work you've put into this! I hate punishing good websites because of the bad ones.

i dont like this

thanks. got pretty tired of hearing for months how in an upcoming beta google might let us mute sites perm.. in the three months since that story seems like the audio problem has gotten much worse. all teh worlds news media seemed to have went to the same web seminar that told them, they need to get a floating news auto player immediately.

Sites can play sound for a fraction of a second before CleverMute kicks in, but it's still a huge improvement. It doesn't happen again after a site has been muted. I like how easy it is to toggle sound on/off.

Great. Especially with all the autoplay video with sound on at major news sites. However it would be great if the whitelist feature worked. I have to keep toggling with sites like Netflix and Youtube, especially since this extension reactivates the disabling upon reload.

EXACTLY! what I was looking for. I honestly never though any one would make something like this but here it is and the only one that does exactly what I need it to do. It's perfect thank you.

Working as intended. Thanks.