Opera introduces audio indicator in Opera 28

The most recent Developer edition of the Opera browser, version 28.0.1745 ships with a new feature that highlights tabs in the browser if audio is playing on websites loaded in those tabs.

There are not many features that I wish Firefox would have that Chrome has already. One that is high up on that list is Chrome's ability to not only indicate whether audio is playing in a tab but also its means to mute it without having to switch to that tab first to use on-page controls.

Opera Software made the first step towards that implementation with today's release of Opera Developer 28.0.1745.

The audio indicator feature the browser ships with needs to be enabled before it becomes available. The easiest way to do just that is to load the following url in the browser and switch the tab audio indicator preference from disabled to enabled: opera://flags/#tab-audio-indicator

As the name suggests, this is merely an indicator right now. It works reasonably well however both on sites using HTML5 or Adobe Flash to play audio.

I have tested this even on Flash game sites and the feature worked properly on those as well. Since the feature is hidden behind a preference right now, I'd assume that Opera wants to test it more before it enables it for all users of the Developer version.

The company has not revealed when audio indicators will become available in the stable version of Opera nor if it plans to improve the feature further by enabling mute options right in tabs just like Chrome does.

Since it does support Pepper Flash, it could very well implement that feature, something that Mozilla cannot.

Opera version 28 was shipped with an assortment of bookmark improvements included. Bookmarks are displayed in the address bar drop-down for instance now and there is an option to remove a bookmark again in the popup which can be useful if you bookmarked a site accidentally or want to remove it at a later point in time.

If you are interested in the Developer edition of Opera but have not downloaded it yet, you can download the latest version on the Opera website.