When you visit any page, it isn’t very pleasant when suddenly the sound starts auto-playing. To avoid such embarrassing situations, Microsoft Edge for Android has the settings to enable or disable sound permission access for all websites. You can also add exceptions where only allowed sites can play the sound.
Recently I started noticing that websites, especially news websites, are misusing the browser’s sound and music permission feature. They are auto-playing the videos and podcasts without the permission of the user.
Perhaps you should consider blocking other permissions, like camera, microphone, etc., for the sites you do not wish to grant.
The website needs permission to play sound and host music using a web browser. Microsoft Edge does have a feature to either allow or disable sound access for the website, which we can use in our favor.
Disable Sound Permission
If you are just as annoyed as me due to the online auto-media play, you can disable website sound permission. It will enhance your browsing experience and save you from embarrassing situations. The edge sound settings let you access that.
Here are the steps to disable the sound permission:
- Launch Microsoft Edge for the Android.
- Tap on the More
menu for options. - Select the Settings menu from the options list.
- Tap on the Privacy and Security.
- Please scroll down to the Site Permissions option, and tap on it.
- Choose the Allow sites to play sound option from the list, which is set to Allowed by default.
- Disable the toggle button to Block the sound permissions.
This will disable the sound permission for all the sites to play the sound on the Edge browser. However, Edge also allows adding the exception list of sites that play sound in blocking mode. The Edge sound settings have the option to browse it all.
All you need to do is keep the Sound access blocked and all the website URLs in the Add site exception list. This will allow only the sites listed in the exception to play the sound. The others will be blocked as usual.
Enable Sound Permission
If you disable the sound permission, it will block sounds for all the sites. You can choose to enable sound permission for other websites. But I prefer to keep it enabled for all websites and block the sound permission for a few websites. These belong to the site exception list. Here are the steps to follow
- Launch the Microsoft Edge app for Android.
- Tap on the More menu for options.
- Select the Settings menu from the options list.
- Tap on the Privacy and Security.
- Scroll down to the Site Permissions option, and tap on it.
- Choose the Allow sites to play sound option from the list.
- Enable the toggle button to allow the sound to play permission.
This will allow all the sites to play sound on the Edge browser on Android smartphones. However, if you want to block certain websites from auto-playing the music or sound, like news broadcasts, radio, etc., you can add them to the exception list. All these are available under the edge sound settings.
As mentioned above, we blocked sound for most websites and whitelisted a few websites to play sound. Here, we will allow the sounds for all sites but add a few into the Add site exception to block the sound play. This will block the sound permission to play on the speaker from the websites listed in the exceptions.
Bottom Line
The website generally does have sound permission to play audio. This permission is misused by famous news sites and blogs to auto-play media without the user’s consent, causing a disturbance. Hence, you should block the sound permission and mute the sites.
Once I enabled the sound permission android that blocked these websites from playing sound, my browsing experience improved. Only the websites I wanted to play sound from would do so now.
Similarly, you can also manage sound access for websites on the Edge computer browser. This will disable or enable the sound for all sites, and you can allow selected sites if needed.
Did you disable the sound permissions for the Edge Android browser? What option have you chosen?
Lastly, if you've any thoughts or feedback, then feel free to drop in below comment box. You can also report the outdated information.
