How to mute all sound in a page with JS?

Question

How can I mute all sound on my page with JS?

This should mute HTML5 <audio> and <video> tags along with Flash and friends.

Answer 1

Rule #1: Never enable audio autoplay upon page loading.

Anyway I'll show for HTML5 using jQuery:

// WARNING: Untested code ;)

window.my_mute = false;

$('#my_mute_button').bind('click', function(){

    $('audio,video').each(function(){

        if (!my_mute ) {

            if( !$(this).paused ) {
                $(this).data('muted',true); //Store elements muted by the button.
                $(this).pause(); // or .muted=true to keep playing muted
            }

        } else {

            if( $(this).data('muted') ) {
                $(this).data('muted',false);
                $(this).play(); // or .muted=false
            }

        }
    });

    my_mute = !my_mute;

});

Flash Media Players depends on the custom API (hopefuly) exposed to JavaScript.

But you get the idea, iterate through media, check/store playing status, and mute/unmute.

Answer 2

This can easily be done in vanilla JS:

// Mute a singular HTML5 element
function muteMe(elem) {
    elem.muted = true;
    elem.pause();
}

// Try to mute all video and audio elements on the page
function mutePage() {
    var elems = document.querySelectorAll("video, audio");

    [].forEach.call(elems, function(elem) { muteMe(elem); });
}

or in ES6:

// Mute a singular HTML5 element
function muteMe(elem) {
    elem.muted = true;
    elem.pause();
}

// Try to mute all video and audio elements on the page
function mutePage() {
    document.querySelectorAll("video, audio").forEach( elem => muteMe(elem) );
}

This, of course, only works with <video> or <audio> elements, as items like Flash or JS initialized audio is impossible to restrict in general.

Answer 3

I did it like this:

Array.prototype.slice.call(document.querySelectorAll('audio')).forEach(function(audio) {
    audio.muted = true;
});

Answer 4

Hold a reference to all audio/video elements inside an array and then make a function which performs a loop over them while setting the .muted=true.