Do you remember when you could easily mute a tab playing audio in Chrome without going to it and manually fiddling with the player on that page? Google inexplicably removed the ability to do this back in 2018. Thankfully, it looks likely that the feature will be making a comeback.

According to a Chromium Gerrit update spotted by Redditor u/Leopeva64-2, Google is "bringing this back." This doesn't mean that it will definitely arrive in a near-future Chrome update, but simply that it is planned at some point (and obviously, plans can change).

Right now, you can mute a tab by right-clicking it and selecting "Mute site" from the menu. However, this silences every tab you have open for that site and that will remain the case until you unmute the site. If the new feature works exactly like it used to, you'll be able to click the audio icon on the tab to mute just the individual tab and not the entire site, which is much more convenient and useful.

As u/Leopeva64-2 points out, this is exactly how it works in the current version of Microsoft Edge, so the above method is what we'll hopefully see back in Chrome eventually.

Before we get that functionality back, another mute option is also on the way. The Chrome Canary channel currently has a mute button in the global media controls menu, so we can expect to see that in the stable version of Chrome in the not-too-distant future. Before long, you'll be spoiled for choice when it comes to muting audio.