How to stop videos autoplaying with sound in Chrome

You open a news site and a video starts talking before the page has finished loading. Chrome does have rules against this, but they have gaps.

What Chrome already does

Chrome lets a page play sound on its own only when you've shown interest in the site, for example by visiting it often or by playing media there before. Videos that are muted can always autoplay. That's why background clips and GIF-style videos play without asking, and why a site you use a lot may still surprise you.

Chrome's built-in options

• Mute a single site: right-click its tab and choose Mute site. Chrome remembers this for the site.
• Block sound for sites by default: in Settings, open Privacy and security → Site settings → Sound (the exact path can differ between Chrome versions) and choose which sites may play sound.

These work, but they're all-or-nothing. Muting a site also mutes the video you *do* want to watch, and you have to find the setting for each site.

A better fit: stop only the surprise

Hush stops media that starts with sound by itself and leaves everything else alone:

1. Muted autoplay keeps playing. Background videos stay as they are.
2. Anything you start plays. A click or a key press counts, and once you've started something, the playlist continues.
3. A count on the toolbar icon shows how many videos Hush stopped on the page, so you know it worked.
4. Per-site off switch for sites you trust. Shortcut: Alt+Shift+H.

Hush runs on every site, because autoplay can happen anywhere. It doesn't read, store or send what's on the page.

When Hush won't help

A site that deliberately starts sound after you click anything on the page (such as a cookie banner) will count that click as yours. And audio that isn't in a video or audio element, such as sound made by a game engine, isn't something Hush can see.