Suggestion: Add option to disable/hide audio mute button on tab

[Brave-Matt]

Description

I've had a surprising number of users report that they very frequently mute a tab playing audio in the background on accident when moving or switching between tabs:

Note that there used to be a Chromium flag to enable/disable the mute tab button that was removed.

It may be good for future releases to add the option to disable or hide this feature should users continue to have this issue.

Miscellaneous Information:

User reports:
https://community.brave.com/t/please-add-an-option-to-disable-the-tab-audio-muting-button/89927
https://community.brave.com/t/how-do-i-turn-off-the-new-mute-sound-button-in-tabs/87439/3
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/dow6hb/muteunmute_tabs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/dirtje/tab_disable_mute_toggle_functionality/

[pSub]

Note that this is especially annoying in combination with pinned tabs. I've a pinned tab with my subsonic instance and it is really tough to switch to it. Let alone to know which tab it is as the mute button hides the favicon.

[bsclifton]

Good call, @pSub - I've got that captured in #6358 if you wanted to give it a thumbs up 😄

[pSub]

Thank you @bsclifton, I gave it a thumbs up.

[TheSarnowski]

Was just lookin' for a way to disable it, as I'm keeping muting tabs instead of closing them, or toggling...
Additional idea: let it ignore middle click on tabs (when someone wants to close tab with middle click...)

[th317erd]

I am with you on this. Pinned tabs are especially annoying. Maybe just have the mute button not visible unless the tab is active?

[davidhq]

Very annoying indeed... as much as Brave helps you "stay in the flow" by recently working reliably enough, this thing ejects you out of "the flow" in a split-second... then you say: ah yes, I clicked the mute button again, that's what happened... I would rate this feature 1 out of 10 or even less. Please consider fixing if possible and thank you for great work :)

[DrewDogComputers]

I am literally switching back to chrome because of this. Let me guess, one developer wanted the feature and here we are dealing with it... in what world do i want a fucking mute button the size of the 'x' and almost as big as the whole tab so i can fat finger it every, single, fucking, time...

[NejcZdovc]

@rebron can we maybe up priority on this one?

[bradleyrichter]

@rebron Perhaps the best solution is to only allow the click-action to occur if the tab is selected. Then you retain the mute/play indicator status and the button usefulness where it's really important.

[DrewDogComputers]

Or, hear me out: put a toggle to remove this useless 'feature'

[th317erd]

@bradleyrichter I think having it only show up on an active is a good idea, but I think it will still have the same level of frustration in some cases. For example, the situation is REALLY bad for pinned tabs, and would still be present for users who are trying to rearrange pinned tabs. It is only one extra click to alt-click and select "Mute Site". I feel this "feature" should just be removed altogether, as it will likely be frustrating to most users even if it shows up only on the active tab.

There are also "Mute Tab" extensions on the extension store for users who really want a "fast click" option to mute the tab.

[bsclifton]

@rebron what do you think about adding a toggle for this (not sure where- appearance? we almost need a new tabs section in settings) and setting the default to OFF (matching Chrome default behavior). For folks wanting it, they could opt-in

[JoeriTheGreat]

I'm on Version 1.3.118 Chromium: 80.0.3987.116 (Official Build) (64-bit) and the problem is gone!
They fixed it.
#2025