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Why is Firefox is changing the volume of background tabs?

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I've noticed the new mute a tab function, which is very useful - i.e. click on the speaker on a tab with audio and it is muted.

I have also noticed that if I start watching a YouTube video, the tab which I am using to listen to the radio significantly lowers its output volume. The second I pause the YouTube video, the tab with the radio on starts increasing in volume again, until after about 2 seconds it is back to it's normal volume.

I'm interested in knowing what is causing this, and if there are any settings I can fiddle with to completely mute other tabs when a new tab starts making noise - aside from the obvious manually muting all tabs.

Having searched around, I can't seem to find any news on this development. Is this YouTube or Firefox?

All help is appreciated

I've noticed the new mute a tab function, which is very useful - i.e. click on the speaker on a tab with audio and it is muted. I have also noticed that if I start watching a YouTube video, the tab which I am using to listen to the radio significantly lowers its output volume. The second I pause the YouTube video, the tab with the radio on starts increasing in volume again, until after about 2 seconds it is back to it's normal volume. I'm interested in knowing what is causing this, and if there are any settings I can fiddle with to completely mute other tabs when a new tab starts making noise - aside from the obvious manually muting all tabs. Having searched around, I can't seem to find any news on this development. Is this YouTube or Firefox? All help is appreciated

All Replies (3)

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So Firefox is still not able to prevent HTML5 from starting automatically? The setting in about:config was supposed to be able to control that. media.autoplay.enabled -> false

Flashblock can control that, but more recently, it was blocking HTML5 completely, so I had to put its toolbar button on a toolbar and use it to toggle Flashblock on and off. I got frustrated with all the problems caused by HTML5 on YouTube, so I got an extension called YouTube Flash Video Player to force YouTube to send videos as Flash instead.

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Having rebooted Firefox and my computer it seems to have stopped. I'm very confused what seems to have cause it.

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Any on another reboot, it's started doing it again... :-/