There are times when you do not want to hear any sound from the Firefox browser. For example you may be on a web page that has a Flash animation and the sound coming from it is really annoying, or you have to mute all sounds coming from Firefox because of an incoming call you want to answer. Or you are in a public place and you have to mute Firefox because you do not want other people to be irritated because of the sounds the browser makes.
As a Firefox user, you have some options here but that may be influenced by the kind of operating system you use. If for example you use Windows 7, you can mute Firefox by using the sound mixer. Even though this is also an effective way of muting the sound coming from Firefox, you may find it a little unpleasant, particularly if you have to regularly turn on and turn off the sounds coming from the browser.
You can now mute Firefox using an extension known as Muter. When this Firefox extension is installed on your system; it will add a button to Firefox’s status bar. To instantly mute all sounds coming from the browser, all you have to do is click this button with the left mouse button. Clicking on the button one more time will bring back the sound.
A green icon on the status bar tells you that all sound is turned on, while a black icon tells you that all sounds coming from the browser has been disabled.
You can change these icons and some other settings by going to the extension’s preferences.
You can unmute or mute Firefox using the short cut Ctrl-Alt-M. If you do not like seeing the add-on’s icon in Firefox’s status bar, this hotkey can be really helpful.
You may prefer to go back to the mute status anytime the browser restarts. There is an option for doing this in the settings. Each time the browser is restarted, sounds are enabled automatically if you did not check this option in the preferences.
If you want to be able to mute Firefox using Muter, you have to visit the official Firefox extensions repository to download and install the add-on.
