mute.fm Support

Send questions, issues, feature suggestions, etc. to mutefmapp@gmail.com, tweet @mutefm or use the issue tracker.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How does this work? mute.fm listens to the volume of each program (as you might see in the Windows Volume Mixer). When a program makes a sound, mute.fm fades out your background music and when all programs are silent for awhile (7 seconds by default), mute.fm fades your background music back in.
• I am listening to music but when I played a video my music didn't fade out. Why? You need to tell mute.fm which program or website is your background music. If your music comes from a program, run it, play some music, and you can select it. If it is a website, you need to open it in a browser dedicated to that site (mute.fm comes with its own Chromium-based browser that works great for this purpose.) The reason for this is it isn't possible to detect or control the volume of individual tabs, since they share a single instance of Flash. (This will change really soon for Chrome, but there is no way to control it via other software.) By opening the website within a different program, its volume can be controlled separately. Note that when you do this, you may need to log into the site again and restart the music/video from the beginning.
• My music started playing in the middle of a video. Why did this happen? Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell from looking at the volume if a video is finishing, being paused, or being silent for a long time. If this causes a problem, it is recommended that you configure mute.fm to remain silent longer. (If it seems too long, you can start your music sooner via a hotkey (Ctrl-Alt-X by default) or by clicking Play.) Alternatively, you can stop your music or disable automute to prevent it from starting up again.
• Why does mute.fm launch say I need to interact with the player? If you ask mute.fm to play music but no sounds are emitted, one of the following is the likely reason: you need to add more music to the playlist, you need to manually click Play, login, or do some other action, you need to restore Internet access, or you just need to wait. You can turn off this notification if it becomes overly bothersome.
• Will it pause my music when it fades out? Maybe. If your music comes from iTunes, foobar2000, WinAmp, Pandora, Rdio, Spotify (desktop), Zune, Windows Media Player, Last.fm, or MOG it does so automatically. If you use a different player, mute.fm includes an editor that can run a DOS or JavaScript command. (If you get something new working, forward it on to mute.fm development so everyone else can take advantage of it.)
• Isn't my muted background music going to use up all of my bandwidth? mute.fm stops your background music after being muted for 30 minutes (but you can change it). This means that if you are watching a long video, for some players when your background music restarts, it may have to do so at the beginning again.
• I don't want my music to fade out whenever a certain program plays a sound. Can I configure mute.fm to ignore it? Yes. Remove the checkbox next to the program in the main UI or use the editor to tell it to not force automuting the music. If the sound is too inconsistent to be able to click that button, go to the Sound Players list, find your music under 'Recent Sounds', add it as a favorite, edit it, and check 'Ignore for automuting'. Typically you would want to choose this for system sounds, chat notifications, and games without background music. Also, if you are recording your screen (using a program such as Camtasia or Screencast-O-Matic), you may need to exclude that program as well.
• Which operating systems will this work on? mute.fm requires Windows 7 or Windows 8. For Windows 8, it only supports programs run from the classic desktop, since all sounds from Windows 8 apps are treated as "system sounds" which cannot be distinguished from each other. Windows 8 offers capabilities similar to mute.fm for new style apps.
  
  Mac and Linux support are being investigated. Follow mute.fm on Twitter for the latest updates.