Stop Browser Tabs From Auto-Playing Audio on Mac

You have twenty tabs open and you're working in one of them. Suddenly audio starts playing from somewhere: a video ad, an auto-playing news clip, or a tab you opened an hour ago. You click through the tabs one by one to find it.

macOS can't mute a single app (let alone a single tab) without muting everything, so the real fixes live inside your browser. Here's how to stop autoplay at the source, mute a noisy tab fast, and keep the whole browser at a sensible level next to your other apps.

Disable autoplay in Safari

Safari has good built-in autoplay controls:

1. Open Safari > Settings and go to the Websites tab
2. Select Auto-Play in the sidebar
3. At the bottom, set the default for other websites to Stop Media with Sound or Never Auto-Play

Stop Media with Sound blocks videos that start playing with audio but still allows muted autoplay, which many sites use for decorative background video. Never Auto-Play blocks everything.

In the same panel you can set exceptions per site, for example allowing autoplay on a streaming site you trust.

Control sound in Chrome

Chrome's controls work per site rather than per video:

1. Go to chrome://settings/content/sound
2. Choose whether sites can play sound by default
3. Add specific sites to the list of sites that aren't allowed to play sound

Mute one tab quickly

Safari and Chrome both show a speaker icon on tabs that are playing audio, so you can spot the noisy one without clicking through every tab.

• Safari: click the speaker icon on the tab to mute it.
• Chrome: right-click the tab and choose Mute site. This silences that site until you unmute it.
• Firefox: right-click the tab and choose the mute option, or click the speaker icon on the tab.

This works one tab at a time. If several tabs are noisy, you're still clicking through them.

The bigger problem: the browser versus everything else

Even with autoplay off, you may want your browser at a different level than your other apps. Maybe you're watching a tutorial in a tab during a Zoom call and want the tutorial quiet and the call at full volume. Or a tab plays background music that competes with Spotify.

To macOS, the whole browser is one app. The system volume moves every app at once, so there's no built-in way to make the browser quieter than Zoom or Spotify.

A volume slider for the browser itself

A per-app volume mixer adds the missing control. SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac, sits in your menu bar and gives each running app its own slider and mute button.

To be clear about what it does and doesn't do: SoundDial works per app, not per browser tab. All tabs of a browser share one slider. Use the browser's own tab mute for individual tabs, and SoundDial for the browser as a whole:

• Lower Safari to 30% while Zoom stays at 100%
• Mute Chrome in one click while Spotify keeps playing
• Boost a quiet browser above 100% (up to 200%) without making other apps louder

When a surprise tab starts playing, you can mute the whole browser from the menu bar right away, then find and close the offending tab at your own pace. More on this: mute one app on Mac. If you want different levels for different tabs, see controlling browser tab volume on Mac.

SoundDial needs macOS 14.2 or later and is €14.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store, no subscription.

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.