Chrome Gets Audible Notifications for Tabs Playing Sound in the Background, Again

A few months ago, Chrome tried to solve one of the biggest problems facing humanity today, how to find that tab that suddenly starts blaring music, or annoying ads, or that video you shouldn't be watching at work, or anywhere else perhaps.

It experimented with adding an animated icon on top of the sites favicon. But after several variants, Google couldn't quite get it right. Covering the favicon made some tabs hard to find and the sound notification icon, even if it was animated, didn't always stand out.

More recently, Google came up with a solution, though it's hardly ideal since it only works with YouTube. You'll notice that tabs that play a video in the background get a "play" icon added next to the regular YouTube favicon.


But Google has finally come up with a universal solution, one that seems to solve all problems. The solution is a simple one, placing the notification icon to the right of the tab, to differentiate it from regular favicons.

The feature is still experimental, as François Beaufort noticed, and hidden behind a flag in the latest Chromium and possibly Chrome Canary builds. You can turn it on by enabling the "audible-notifications" flag.