Feature: save sound settings

[S1NJED]

I think it can be great if we can save the sound settings instead of change it every time we start our browser.

What do you think?

[JobLeonard]

Just to add an example of why this would be great: as I just mentioned in #8, I'm half-deaf so having (almost) all browser audio default to a mono mix by default would be a fantastic quality of life improvement

[valpackett]

@JobLeonard any reason not to use a system-wide setting for that?

The addon has really been intended for the rare "one particular piece of media is screwed up" situations; adding any kind of persistence that would mess with pages automatically instead of directly in response to user input doesn't sit right with me. Imagine a user saving some setting, removing the icon from the toolbar, forgetting about the addon, and wondering why the hell is sound weird in Firefox – on many sites except not on some because there are things SoundFixer cannot touch due to security restrictions. (Those existing is also a good reason to turn to your operating system for help instead.)

[iamtalhaasghar]

@JobLeonard any reason not to use a system-wide setting for that?

The addon has really been intended for the rare "one particular piece of media is screwed up" situations; adding any kind of persistence that would mess with pages automatically instead of directly in response to user input doesn't sit right with me. Imagine a user saving some setting, removing the icon from the toolbar, forgetting about the addon, and wondering why the hell is sound weird in Firefox – on many sites except not on some because there are things SoundFixer cannot touch due to security restrictions. (Those existing is also a good reason to turn to your operating system for help instead.)

I understand. What if we could have a toggle / radio button (right beside Mono, Flip L/R radio buttons) in extension itself which says to persist setting or not. Users who want to save settings can toggle it on. It should be disabled by default. This could really help a user like me, who has to visit a site regularly which has really bad / low volume by default and there is no way to amplify it except this amazing extension. I literally have to increase gain every time I watch a video on coursera.org.

I even forked your repo and tried to add persistence using chatgpt 😆 but couldn't succeed in implementing this feature as I don't have much experience of developing browser extensions. I mean I can do this as well but it will take some huge effort (may be days) for me to understand and then plugin this required functionality.

If you can do this easily that would be really helpful and owsm! Or if you can give me some useful pointers on how to do it that can save me a lot of time as well.

Again I really appreciate your efforts for maintaining this extension.

[JobLeonard]

@JobLeonard any reason not to use a system-wide setting for that?

Well, this is a bit specific but here goes: I'm not exactly 100% deaf on the left ear, "just" 50% but it's almost all in the middle range of frequencies used for speech. That means I prefer mono for music, for example.

However, I can still use binaural beats outside of that middle frequency range, which I often do to either focus or relax. Binaural beats only work with stereo. On a similar note, noise generators (which I use for noise blocking) are more pleasant in stereo. I do none of those things via the browser.

Also the system-wide mono setting is a bit finicky, given the lack of GUI controls or built-in keyboard shortcuts (I use Linux, fwiw). I have to figure out some command-line invocation to switch it on or off, and also do so every time I connect or disconnect my bluetooth headphones.

I totally understand that this is is a very specific scenario and not within the original scope of the add-on, so if you don't feel like adding it I won't complain. And I agree that persistent settings by default would not make sense. But opt-in persistency for people like me would be very nice.