Best browser extensions for video and audio

Global Speed is a playback controller for video and audio on any website. Its idea is to set a speed once and have it apply everywhere. It is made by a single developer, POLYWOCK, and works on YouTube, Netflix, Spotify and podcast sites.

You can define URL rules that apply a favourite speed on specific sites, and assign hotkeys for rewind, skip, frame-by-frame stepping and volume. The panel also offers brightness and contrast filters, a volume boost up to 600 percent and a pitch shift. The audio effects work only on Chromium browsers.

The trade-offs are trust and scope. The code is on GitHub, but the repository has no licence file and the Firefox listing says all rights reserved, so it is source available rather than open source. It asks to read and change every site, plus tab capture and user scripts. The privacy policy says it collects no personal data, though it may fetch a small file from GitHub to promote the developer's own side projects. If you want one speed tool that works in all three browsers, this is the one to install.

Video Speed Controller does one job: it gives any HTML5 video or audio player the speed controls that sites hide or cap. It was written by Ilya Grigorik and is open source under the MIT licence. Its Chrome listing is offered under his own name, which matters in a category with so many copycats.

Once installed, a small speed indicator appears in the corner of the video. You can click it, or use the keyboard: S slows down, D speeds up, R resets, and Z and X rewind or skip ten seconds. Every key is remappable, the speed range runs from 0.07x to 16x, and you can set a default speed for particular sites or have it remember your last speed.

There are limits. It is a Chrome extension only. The Firefox listings are unofficial ports by other developers, and we do not rank them. It has no volume boost or filters, and it runs a script on every web page, though its manifest requests no permission beyond storage. The store rating is 4.0 from about 4,500 ratings. For Chrome users who want a lean, inspectable speed tool and do not need extras, it is a safe choice.

Volume Master is a volume booster that works on any tab. It is built by Peta Sittek, a developer based in Prague who publishes many small extensions, and it has about seven million users on Chrome and roughly 190,000 on Edge. Open it on a tab that is playing sound and you get a slider from 0 to 600 percent.

It also offers a voice boost, which lifts dialogue and podcasts, and a bass boost for music. A button switches to whichever other tab is making noise. Its manifest asks for tab audio capture and access to the active tab, but requests no access to the content of the sites you visit. Chrome blocks true full-screen while an extension processes a tab's audio, so the listing suggests F11 on Windows or Ctrl+Cmd+F on a Mac.

The warning here is about copies. In June 2025 researchers flagged a different listing named Volume Master: Master Your Sound, with about 3,000 users and another publisher, so check that the developer is Peta Sittek. The extension is closed source and has not been updated on Chrome since April 2025, but its policy says no data is sent anywhere, and it is the simple booster we trust most among those we looked at.

The Picture-in-Picture Extension is a small Chrome tool from Google that puts a video in a floating window above your other windows. Many players do not offer a picture-in-picture button, so the extension adds one to the toolbar. Click it, or press Alt+P (Option+P on a Mac), and it picks the largest video on the page and pops it out.

There is also an automatic mode. The right-click menu on the toolbar icon has an option labelled Automatic picture-in-picture (BETA), which is on by default, and when you leave a tab the video can pop out by itself. Under the hood this hooks into the browser's media session, which is why the extension is only about 10 KB of code and is easy to read.

The downsides are modest. It is only in the Chrome Web Store, the store lists the latest version as February 2025, and its rating is 3.4 from about 2,700 ratings, the lowest in this list. It does ask to run on every site, which it needs to find the video, and handles one video at a time. The developer is Google Ireland, the code is Apache 2.0 licensed, and its code makes no network requests. It is a safe, plain way to get picture-in-picture on any site.

Accelerate is a Safari extension for controlling video playback. Several of the Safari speed tools in the App Store are paid or have only a handful of ratings. This one is free, open source under GPL-3.0 and built by a single developer, Ritam Sarmah, who also publishes the code on GitHub.

It adds playback speed control to HTML5 video, with keyboard shortcuts you can reassign for common actions such as play and pause, skipping, mute and picture-in-picture. You can also use its popup menu from the Safari toolbar. The listing names YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, Prime Video and Twitch, and says it supports picture-in-picture and AirPlay. It runs on Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Safari shows a warning that the extension can read sensitive information on all webpages. The developer's privacy page explains this is the general warning for any extension that loads scripts into pages, says Accelerate never collects personal data and states it reads nothing sensitive from pages. The App Store rating is 4.2 from 53 ratings, and the latest release is February 2026. For Safari it is the best free and open choice we found, but we could not test playback.

Audio Equalizer is a small tool that lets you adjust the balance between low, middle and high frequencies in any web audio. If a laptop speaker sounds thin or a podcast is muddy, you open the toolbar popup and adjust the bands. The developer is listed as Muyor and publishes under the MyBrowserAddon name; the Firefox listing dates from 2018.

The popup includes presets for styles like pop, club, party and soft rock, and you can save your own setting for later. There is a mono switch, which merges the channels for people who are deaf in one ear, and a dark theme. It works on pages that use HTML5 audio or video.

Trust is mostly fine but not perfect. Firefox lists it under the Mozilla Public License and marks it Recommended, and the Chrome listing says the developer collects no data. However, it asks to read and change every site, and we could not find a public source repository, so we could not check the code against the listings. The Firefox rating is 4.0 from about 700 ratings. It is a good pick for simple tuning, and a poor one if you want a deep studio-style equaliser.

Volume Control is a volume booster for Firefox and Chromium browsers, and the open source option in this list. Instead of a fixed percentage, it changes the gain from minus 32 to plus 32 decibels, so it can turn down a loud video as well as lift a quiet one. It started as another developer's project and is now maintained by Chaython, who publishes the code on GitHub.

It keeps settings per site, remembering volume, mute and mono for each domain, and lets you exclude sites or paths. A normalising mode can level loudness automatically, and keyboard shortcuts nudge the volume without opening the popup. The project's notes say Firefox can sometimes process DRM-protected audio, while Chrome and Edge cannot, so there only turning the volume down works.

The trade-offs are people and polish. One developer maintains it, the Firefox rating is 3.8 from about 200 ratings and the Edge listing has few users, so it has less track record than Volume Master. It asks for access to all sites, which the listing says is for finding media, and states there is no analytics or telemetry. Pick it if you are on Firefox, where we found no Volume Master listing, and go gently with the sliders.