We’re sure many have come across websites that suddenly start to autoplay videos when they load, or even worse, there are some websites that somehow think it’s a great idea to add background music, and making the controls incredibly difficult to find. Now Google had previously introduced a mute button in Chrome that stops audio from playing.
However this is limited to that particular page and in that moment itself, meaning that should you reload the page, you’re back to having to mute it again. However the good news is that it looks like you won’t have to do it anymore as Google has finally introduced an option to mute websites on a domain basis.
https://twitter.com/timdonnelly/status/961651391851843587
This feature was actually announced back in 2017 where Google revealed that they were testing it out, but it looks like the feature is finally here. Basically what this does is that users who want to mute entire websites that are known to autoplay videos and audio upon loading can do so, and it will apply to the entire domain, meaning that every page will be covered by this mute option.
That being said, there are also some Chrome extensions that have been doing the same thing that are also available, or to be more specific, there are some that prevent videos from playing automatically, meaning that you can play them later if you wish. In any case the feature should already be live for users, just right-click a Chrome tab and the “Mute Site” option should be available to you.