How to Show Tabs Playing Audio in Safari for Mac

Have you ever restored the Safari browser only to have dozens of tabs and browser windows open, one or several of which are playing audio, and you then need to hunt down which browser tab is playing sound? This scenario happens fairly often to those of us who spend a lot of time in web browsers. Rather than mute all tabs in Safari until you figure out which is the loud culprit, there’s a way to see exactly what Safari browser tabs are playing audio or sound in Mac OS X.

How to See & Access Which Tabs are Playing Audio in Safari for Mac

1. From any Safari window or tab, look for the blue audio icon signifying a tab / window is playing sound somewhere
2. Click and hold on the blue audio icon to reveal a pull-down list of all tabs in Safari playing audio



3. Select a tab from the list to immediately bring that tab/window to the forefront

This lets you quickly see and jump to the tab or window that is playing any sound, which you can then take direct action on by stopping the video or audio source, muting the tab playing sound, or, as you’ll see in the drop down menu, you can also select a ‘mute all’ option if you just quickly want to hush everything in Safari on the Mac.

This is a great feature for obvious reasons, and one that hopefully will arrive to future offerings from the other web browsers out there as well. For now, the ability to see all tabs and windows playing sound seems to be limited to Safari on the Mac, however, so enjoy it!