Make it louder!

A privacy-first browser extension that amplifies per-tab audio up to 500%.

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What it does

Make it louder! routes any tab's audio through the Web Audio API and lets you freely amplify it beyond what the browser or OS normally allows. Volume, bass, and stereo/mono mode are all controlled from a clean three-tab popup. Every setting is managed independently per-tab and persisted locally so your levels are remembered for each tab.

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Features

Volume

• Amplify audio from 0% (full mute) up to 500% in real time
• Dynamic toolbar badge: blank at 100%, percentage shown above it, red "MUTE" label at 0%
• Warning indicator displayed above 300% to signal potential audio clipping

Advanced audio controls

• Bass boost via a lowshelf filter centered at 200 Hz, adjustable from 0 to +20 dB
• Mono downmix toggle — collapses stereo output to a single centered channel without extra splitter nodes

Presets

Preset	Volume	Bass	Mode
Movie	250%	+10 dB	Stereo
Podcast	150%	0 dB	Stereo
Reset	100%	0 dB	Stereo

Privacy

• No network requests of any kind
• Settings are persisted locally via browser.storage.local and strictly scoped per-tab — your preferences stay on your device and never bleed between different sites or tabs.
• Declared as collecting no user data (data_collection_permissions: none) in the Firefox manifest
• Requires only activeTab, scripting, and storage permissions

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Architecture

The extension is composed of three independent scripts that communicate via the browser messaging API.

entrypoints/
├── background.ts        Badge manager — listens for volume updates and sets badge text/color
├── content.ts           Web Audio engine — injected on demand into the active tab
└── popup/
    ├── index.html       Popup shell with three tabs: Control, Advanced, About
    ├── main.ts          UI controller — handles sliders, presets, and tab switching
    └── style.css        Self-contained styles, no external dependencies

Audio graph

Each <audio> and <video> element discovered in the page gets its own node chain:

MediaElementSource → GainNode → BiquadFilterNode (lowshelf 200 Hz) → AudioDestination

Elements that are added dynamically (single-page apps, lazy-loaded players) are picked up by a MutationObserver watching document.body. All nodes are disconnected and the AudioContext is closed on beforeunload to prevent memory leaks.

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Getting started

Requirements

Requirement	Version
Node.js	18 or higher
npm	9 or higher

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Launch a dev browser with hot reload (Chrome/Edge)
npm run dev

# Launch on Firefox (Manifest V3)
npm run dev:firefox

Building for distribution

# Chrome / Edge (Manifest V3)
npm run build
npm run zip

# Firefox (Manifest V3)
npm run build:firefox
npm run zip:firefox

The zipped extension is written to .output/. The unzipped build is at .output/chrome-mv3/ or .output/firefox-mv3/ respectively.

Type checking

npm run compile

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Tech stack

Tool	Role	License
WXT v0.20.x	Extension framework — manifest generation, dev server, bundling	MIT
Vite v8.x	Bundler (used internally by WXT)	MIT
TypeScript v5.x	Static typing across all entrypoints	Apache-2.0
Web Audio API	In-browser audio processing (no native code)	Browser built-in

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Browser compatibility

Browser	Supported	Notes
Chrome / Chromium	It should but didn't try	Manifest V3
Microsoft Edge	It should but didn't try	Manifest V3
Firefox	Yes	Manifest V3 via --mv3 flag

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue before submitting a pull request so the change can be discussed first.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature)
3. Commit your changes
4. Open a pull request against main

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License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.