How to Mute Everyone on Google Meet

Google Meet comes with the basic features you need to communicate effectively, but like any other good video calling app, it has some shortcomings. An example of this is when not all participants in a group conversation can be muted at the same time. You’ll find this feature in other apps like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Skype. What if you need to mute everyone in your Google Meet group video call? In this article, we will talk about the solution.

Relax, you are not alone in struggling with this. Thousands of users like you are looking for ways to mute all participants in a Google Meet video. Without further ado, let’s move on to the section below to learn how to mute everyone in Google Meet.

Note: The workarounds listed below only apply to PC/web users of Google Meet. You cannot use these cheats in the mobile app or mobile browser.

1. Close Browser Tab

A great solution for muting all Google Meet participants is to mute the tab that is running the meeting. Google introduced the Close Tab feature back to Chrome in 2017 for this purpose, to mute the sound from websites playing annoying audio in the background. If you do not have time to watch the audio source on the website, you can mute the entire tab.

Besides Chrome, other popular browsers like Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox also allow users to mute tabs. The Mute tab feature is a great improvisation, as Google Meet doesn’t have a native function to mute participants remotely.

Do you know: For web users, Google Meet video meeting only works in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

To mute everyone in Google Meet, you should use your browser’s Mute tab feature. Its implementation is a fairly simple process, but we’ll show you how to do it in Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

Mute Everyone on Google Meet in Chrome

Stage 1: Start the Chrome browser and right-click the Meet tab.

Step 2: Select Mute site.

This will mute all sound/sound from the website active in the tab until you turn it on. As a result, this will (implicitly) mute everyone in the Google Meet conversation.

To unmute Google Meet, perhaps when you need to hear participants speak, you need to right-click the tab and select Unmute site.

One downside of Chrome’s Site Mute feature is that it mutes other tabs that support the function for the same site. Let’s say you have 3 YouTube tabs open. When you mute one of the tabs, Chrome also mutes the other two YouTube tabs.

Mute Everyone in Google Meet in Firefox

The Mute tab feature of the Mozilla Firefox browser can be improvised to mute everyone in Google Meet. To do this, follow the steps below.

Stage 1: Launch Mozilla Firefox on your computer and right-click on the Google Meet tab.

Step 2: Select Mute Tab to mute Google Meet.

This should put a crossed speaker icon in the tab. This is an indication that the tab and everyone else in your Google Meet video call is muted.

To unmute Google Meet in Firefox, right-click the muted tab and select Open Tab.

Mute Everyone in Google Meet in Microsoft Edge

In Microsoft Edge, you can use the ‘Mute tab’ feature to mute everyone in a Google Meet call. You can also check other Microsoft Edge tips and tricks with it. The process is quite easy and straightforward; The steps are listed below.

Stage 1: Launch Microsoft Edge in your browser and right-click on the Google Meet tab.

Step 2: Select the Silent tab.

Pro Tip: You can also use the ‘Ctrl + M’ keyboard shortcut to mute a tab in Microsoft Edge.

2. Mute the Sound Using the Browser Extension

There are Chrome extensions that allow you to mute a tab in the browser. You will find these extensions useful if you (i) want to mute everyone in a Google Meet call and (ii) want to mute a particular tab without having to mute an entire website, i.e. in Chrome.

We tested a few of these extensions and found this ‘Close Tab (by trmcnvn)’ to be stable. More than 50,000 people use it and gave it 5 stars on the Chrome Web Store.

Follow the steps below to learn how to use the extension to mute several participants in Google Meet.

Stage 1: Visit the Close Tab extension page and tap the ‘Add to Chrome’ button to install it in your browser.

Install Silent Tab (by trmcnvn)

Step 2: Tap the Add extension button at the prompt to confirm the installation.

Stage 3: Now, tap the speaker icon next to the address bar in the Chrome menu to mute a Google Meet tab and everyone in it.

This will put the letter M under the speaker icon; this means the tab is muted. To unmute the tab, simply tap the speaker icon (with the M below it).

Cut the Noise

Especially if you’re hosting a large audience, muting individual participants in Google Meet can be tiring. It’s unclear if (or when) Google will introduce a native ‘Mute All’ feature to its video calling platform. By the way, you can use the tricks mentioned above to mute all the participants in your Google Meet video at once.

Next: Want to see all attendees in Google Meet? Learn how to use and enable a grid or tile layout in Google Meet on Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows, and Mac.