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Hear your browser — short audio cues for tabs, downloads, bookmarks, and navigation. 65 events, per-event controls, zero tracking. # Finch — a songbird for your browser Finch plays short audio cues when things happen in your browser. A tab opens. A download finishes. A page loads. A bookmark gets saved. Instead of checking the screen for visual indicators, you hear it. Named after the bird. Finches are small songbirds known for their varied, distinctive calls — each species has its own song. This extension works the same way: each browser event gets its own short, recognizable sound. ## Who this is for The primary audience is blind and low-vision users. Screen readers announce page content well, but they miss the smaller state changes that sighted users catch from visual motion: a download icon flashing, a tab indicator changing, a bookmark turning yellow. Finch fills that gap with short audio cues. If you're not a screen-reader user, Finch is still useful as ambient feedback for what your browser is doing — handy when pages load in background tabs, downloads run while you work in another window, or you have too many tabs to track visually. ## What you hear 64 events on Chrome, 59 on Firefox, across three tiers. Pick the detail level you want. Tier 1 — Essential (25 on Chrome, 26 on Firefox — enabled by default): tab created, tab closed, tab switched, page loading, page loaded, navigation error, download started, download complete, download failed, bookmark added, bookmark removed, window opened, window closed, window focused, tab title changed, extension installed, and more. The events most people want out of the box. Firefox includes a notification-shown event not available on Chrome. Tier 2 — Useful (37 on Chrome, 32 on Firefox — opt-in): tab muted/unmuted, tab pinned, tab zoomed, URL visited, history cleared, system idle, system locked, omnibox interactions, cookie changes. Chrome adds tab groups and tab-replaced events. Useful for specific workflows; each one requires a one-time permission prompt. Tier 3 — Advanced (2 on Chrome, 1 on Firefox — off by default): events that fire frequently enough to be noisy. Useful for debugging or very specific monitoring needs. Per-event debounce suppresses rapid duplicates — a page rewriting its title several times during load only triggers one cue. The Sound Events tab in the options page lists every event with individual controls: - Enable or disable each event independently. - Volume from 0% to 100%. - Pitch from 0.5x to 2.0x. - Preview any sound without enabling the event. A master volume and master mute apply across all events. A separate "mute when unfocused" toggle silences cues whenever no browser window has focus — useful if you switch to another application and don't want stray sounds. Sounds are organized into themes. Finch ships with the Pulse theme — short, clean cues designed to sit under a screen reader's voice without competing. Events that don't have a dedicated sound in the active theme fall back to a tier-based default. Custom theme import is planned for a future release. Browsers fire events in bursts. Clicking a link can produce navigation-starting, page-loading, navigation-committed, DOM-ready, and page-loaded in under a second — five events for one user action. Playing all five sounds would be overwhelming. Finch handles this with: - A global cooldown (~150 ms) that suppresses cascading events while letting you hear the first one. - Priority preemption: higher-priority events (errors, page-loaded) can break through the cooldown window. - Per-event debounce for events that rapid-fire on their own. You hear the meaningful events, not every internal state change. Finch does not play music or continuous audio. It does not read page content — your screen reader handles that. It does not block ads, modify pages, inject scripts, or observe what you do on websites. It does not request access to any website's content. It listens to browser API events (tabs, bookmarks, downloads, navigation) and plays a short sound. That's it. No telemetry. No analytics. No crash reports. No accounts. No third-party services. No CDN fetches. All settings are stored locally in the browser's own extension storage and never leave your machine. Sound files ship inside the extension package. An optional local log server for developers runs on localhost:8089 and is off by default. - Alt+M — toggle mute - Alt+Shift+M — toggle mute-when-unfocused - Alt+Shift+C — open the options page Inside the popup and options page: - Alt+T — cycle through sound themes - Shift+? — hear the available shortcuts read aloud Tab navigation in options follows the standard WAI-ARIA pattern: Tab into the tab list, Left/Right to switch between General, Sound Events, Themes, and Logging. Accessibility is a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have. Finch targets WCAG AA with WCAG AAA contrast ratios. The popup and options page use accessible React primitives (Radix UI), live-region announcements for state changes, and explicit accessible names on every interactive control. All destructive actions (reset, clear logs) require a two-step confirmation. Finch is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). Source code, documentation, and releases are on [GitHub](https://github.com/akash07k/finch). Issue reports, theme contributions, and pull requests are welcome.
Navigational Sounds
Do you remember the classic sounds of the old Internet Explorer when clicking, when a page finished loading, or when a download completed? This extension brings those sounds back and adds other events, such as when typing in a text field or opening and closing a tab. In the options window, you can activate, deactivate, and customize the sounds to your liking. v 2.1 · Added the options page, where you can enable or disable events and customize sounds. · Default setting changed to disabled for keypress sound · Added events for opening and closing tabs. v 2.0 · Mandatory update to Manifest 3.0 (which is more restrictive with sound playback). · Added the event for typing in a text field. Due to Chrome's policies, extensions that attempt to play sound automatically may not work properly. The most effective solution I've found is to close all Chrome instances and start the browser with this setting: ...or if you use Edge: This allows any page, including this extension, to play sounds without user interaction. However, keep in mind that this setting removes restrictions for all websites, which may result in unexpected behavior on sites with unwanted automatic sound. For more details, check Chrome's official documentation: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay#developer_switches It’s also important to note that sound cards, after a period of inactivity, often enter power-saving mode. Since the sounds in this extension are very short, they may not be heard immediately at first. I develop it in my free time and without ads. If you like it and want to see further improvements, a donation is the best way to support it. Thank you!
Download Sound
This simple extension plays a sound or utters a text using speech synthesis when a download is completed. New in version 1.4: Separate texts for successful and failed downloads
Open in RedditForBlind
Allows to open Reddit links in the RedditForBlind app either by replacing links or adding a new link after the Reddit link. RedditForBlind (redditforblind.org) is a free Reddit third party app designed for blind Windows users. This extension allows to open reddit links into this Desktop app for easier browsing. Remember that for this extension to work, you must turn on the "Allow this app to open links from the browser" setting in the RedditForBlind app. To do this, go to the Settings menu from the home page.
Image Describer
Image Describer uses AI to describe content and images on the web for people who are blind or have low-vision. To describe content, use the context menu on a specific image, or the Extension keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+I to describe the full tab contents. The description can be copied to your clipboard through an menu item in the context menu, or through the extension popup or Chrome side panel drawer. You can also change the voice or toggle muting using the Extension Options page at chrome-extension://ogoddjgogmlndofcpkljmmdobjpfdolf/options.html To access the side panel without the mouse, on Mac press Command + Option + Down arrow. On Windows, press F6.
