Make Tab Sound Icon more Noticeable and less Obstructive

chegr

I just moved from Opera to Vivaldi for several reasons.
Some things are way better, but some seem flawed to me. For example, icon overlay for tabs with sound completely replace favicons instead of overlaying, and while they take more space to be displayed, they sadly are less noticeable. Sound waves from speaker just barely visible and difference from frame to frame is not that big.

//MODEDIT: similar requests:

biggly

Totally agree; actually created a V account to point this out to the devs, as I'm also trying to convert from Opera and find it hard to tell which tab is making all the racket.

Pesala

@chegr At 100% UI Zoom the pixel is 16x16 pixels.

How would you design it to make it more obvious?

chegr

@Pesala As I said, I've just moved from Opera. Opera does this better:

This is what I see when Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' are playing on Youtube. Icon obstruct Youtube's favicon only partially. It's easy to notice because of it's very discernible animation. It's still YT with sound ON, I spot it among other icons immediately.

When I hover my mouse over favicon, it changes to speaker icon and background under it gets darkened. Quite informative, I remember I first discovered it.

I don't mind if Vivaldi just copy it.
If not, then it should be about animation and readability.
Your teal example shows only one tiny soundwave at a time (and it's always only one!), while the speaker itself is huge and heavy.

Seasonly

For me the histogram animation from Opera is not a good solution, it is difficult to see it and hides so much the favicon that allows to identify quickly your tab. And Vivaldi does the same, the icon totally hides the favicon, what a shame ! In the current Firefox solution the headphone is located before the cross. But this uses space and risk you to click the cross instead of the headphone . A compromise may be a headphone on a badge (with a clear background color, a inverted circle background maybe) for the favicon, and when the mouse hovers favicon, the headphone grows in order to replace the favicon so far it is easy to click onto it to desactivate the tab sound. This solution is interesting but how to show others useful badges then ?

Pesala

This is my new version:

chegr

@Seasonly Speaking of useful badges, I can't help but share this tab's portrait:

Three (1)! And funny thing about WA is that clicking OS notifications (about new messages) does nothing (while Opera restores and opens the tab). It's a different topic though.

I've checked Firefox solution and it's good, it obstructs nothing, but chance of closing tab is high, I agree.
Opera's histogram is very noticeable for me, but this one might be even better.

May be just move it after the favicon and before tab's name?

Seasonly

@chegr

I think after favicon it's a good idea, before the title then, it 's a better solution than this vivaldi's current one, even when you have a lot of tab shrunk, it needs title space.

zolv

I came here to request this. Good it's not only me having this problem.
I have like ~50 tabs opened, on one of them there is playing some music (youtube or others) and then if I want to stop it, it's very hard to find this small black speaker icon. I want it to be big, bright orange/yellow. If it pulsates it's even better!

mbala

Yes, please change it. Is really confusing in terms of ux. I'm looking for something that isn't there because it's fully covered by another icon. There's so many good things in this browser, and this one little thing is ruining my experience every time. At first i thought i'll get used to it, but after several months – i didn't.

So +1 u guess