Google bestowed a simple and incredibly genius gift upon its Chrome users on Tuesday: when a tab contains an element that is making noise, the browser will pop up an indicator showing where that noise is coming from.
It’s not giving the Internet too much credit to say that it’s normally a pretty user-friendly place. But the grand exception is any Internet nugget that makes sound, especially when you aren’t expecting it, in the middle of a public place. Your blood pressure spikes, your face turns red, and your fingers become clumsy as you scramble to find and kill the tab that betrayed you.
It’s stunning that it took someone so long to come up with a good solution—unexpected noises are only slightly less unpleasant than not being able to figure out where they are coming from. Previously, my less-than-optimal solution was nixing a setting that allows video content to auto-play in Chrome.
I end up toggling this on and off because it prevents some videos from working at all, leaving me the perpetual victim of mysteriously small and obscured auto-playing ads. The Chrome icon obviously won’t prevent this from happening, but it will cut down on the time spent searching for the culprit.
The release of the sound indicators in tabs is in the latest release of the Chrome beta. The release also includes indicators for tabs that are being Chromecast-casted to a TV.