To record your voice and a tab's audio in one file, choose Both in Audio Recorder – Voice Recorder and press Record. The extension mixes your microphone and the current tab's sound into a single take, which you can then download as WebM, OGG, WAV, or MP3.
This is the mode for commentary: talking over a clip, narrating a web demo, reacting to a lecture as it plays, or making a rough voice-over draft against a video in another tab's player. One file, already mixed, no syncing two tracks afterwards.
Set it up
- Open the tab whose sound you want and keep it active.
- Click the extension icon and select Both.
- If Chrome has not yet given the extension microphone access, a small permission window opens. Click Allow.
- In the device picker, choose your microphone. Default microphone follows the system; pick a named device if you use a headset.
- Press Record. The default 3-second countdown shows Starting…, then the status changes to Recording.
- Start playback on the page and talk. Use Pause to step away, Stop to finish.
The tab's sound keeps playing through your speakers during capture; the extension routes it back so you are not talking over silence.
Use headphones. Seriously.
This is the one piece of advice I would give everyone trying Both mode for the first time. If the tab plays through speakers, the microphone hears it too. That puts the same audio in the file twice: once clean from the tab, once from the room, a fraction of a second later. The result sounds hollow.
Echo cancellation is on by default and helps a lot, since it is designed to remove speaker sound from the mic signal. Noise suppression is also on by default and handles steady background hum. Both are Chrome's own audio processing; Noise suppression and echo cancellation explained describes what each one does. Even so, headphones remove the problem at the source instead of filtering it afterwards.
Balance your voice against the tab
The mix is fixed once recorded, so get the balance right before the real take. The tool you have is the mic volume slider: 0 to 200 % in steps of 5, starting at 100 %.
- If your voice disappears under the tab, raise mic volume, or lower the volume in the page's own player.
- If your voice is much louder than the tab, bring the slider down rather than turning the page up to the maximum.
- Do a 15-second test, play it back from the list, adjust, and only then record for real.
Settings are locked during a recording, so make the change between takes. Detailed guidance on levels is in Set the microphone volume for clear takes.
Settings for mixed recordings
| Setting | Options | For voice over a tab |
|---|---|---|
| Quality | 64 / 128 (default) / 192 kbps | 128 kbps is fine; use 192 if the tab plays music |
| Channels | Mono (default) / Stereo | Stereo only if the tab's stereo image matters to you |
| Skip silence | Off (default) / On | Usually off — the tab keeps sound going anyway |
| Countdown | Off / 3 s (default) / 5 s | 5 s if you need to reach the page's play button |
After recording
The take shows up in the list with its waveform. Typical next steps:
- Trim off the fumbling at the start and end: drag the two handles, then Save trim (minimum kept length is 0.5 seconds). Reset undoes the selection before you save.
- Rename the take to something you will recognize next week.
- Choose a format under Save as and press Download, or use Share, which opens your system's share sheet where available and downloads the file otherwise.
If you are producing narration for a video project, Record a voice-over for a video covers pacing and file choices in more depth.
Limits
- Your voice and the tab are mixed into one track. You cannot separate them later inside the extension. If you need them apart, make two recordings: one with Microphone, one with Tab audio.
- Chrome internal pages and the Web Store cannot be captured, in Both mode as in Tab audio mode.
- Only the current tab's sound is included, not other programs on your computer.
When other people are in the tab
If the tab is a call, a meeting, or a live session where others speak, your file will contain their voices. Ask for consent before you start, and follow the recording laws that apply where you and the participants are. Record browser meetings and calls (with consent) covers the etiquette and the practical setup.
Before any take that matters, do the 15-second test. It costs you less time than re-recording a twenty-minute session with your voice buried under the tab.