If you use a PC or laptop to browse the web, you might have come across websites where as you start reading it, a video starts playing… including the sound.
The first time it happens it might make you jump out of your skin – you’re happily reading the news on a newspaper site and suddenly there’s the sound of a jet plane, advertising watches… or someone talking… or a tiger roaring advertising goodness-knows-what.
You can turn the sound off on your computer, of course, but you might not want to – you might want the sound for other things and not want to keep turning it on and off.
Or you can hunt around to find a stop or pause button for the video – it’s not always easy to find, though.
Well, there’s a feature in Google Chrome that might help – and they’re about to make it better.
If you right click on the tab you’re in (that’s the little bit at the top of the window that has the title of the webpage in – you might have several open) in Chrome, you get an option marked “Mute tab”. Click on that and it stops that tab making noise, but still lets other things on your computer make noise.
Handy if you’re listening to music on it at the same time as browsing the web or you simply don’t want to have to remember to turn the sound on again.
But as I say, they’re improving it this week. Once your copy of Chrome has updated, the option will let you mute that particular website permanently. So if you like to the read the news on (say) The Jupiter (as far as I know there isn’t actually a real newspaper called exactly that but kudos to anyone who recognises where I got the name from without looking it up!) but it always plays video or sound adverts that distract you, you can mute it and next time you go to that website it’ll still be muted.
Could be handy!
But here’s a video you might choose to watch…
As you know, we’re currently admitting new members into my Tech Inner Circle for the first time in over a year. This is the last week that the doors will be open but if you have any friends you think might be interested, there’s still time to tell them about it. Here’s the information to pass on to them.
If you’ve joined, I’d recommend you make sure you watch the welcome video that shows you how it all works. In fact, if you’re NOT a member but are wondering if it might be for you, you might want to watch that video too, to see how it all works. Here’s where you can find it.
(Of course, everything else on the Inner Circle website is password protected for members only, but the video on how to use it isn’t, so you can watch that whether you’re a member or not.)