[enhancement] truly Silent mode to turn off ALL sounds

[Peter Velosy]

The silent mode unfortunately lacks the option to prohibit ALL applications from producing sound. This can be extremely frustrating, when someone is in an environment where silence is preferred (library, conference, etc), wants to check something online, and the website (or an application) still produces sound...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately, we cannot work on this bug because your description didn't include enough information. You may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.

We have instructions on debugging some types of problems at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures.

At a minimum, we need:
1. The specific steps or actions you took that caused you to encounter the problem.
2. The behavior you expected.
3. The behavior you actually encountered (in as much detail as possible).
Thanks!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what ubuntu version and device do you use?

[Peter Velosy (petervelosy)]

BQ Aquaris E4.5, Ubuntu OTA-10.1

[Peter Velosy (petervelosy)]

Instructions to reproduce: Set phone to silent, Open Web Browser, go to any web page which plays back sound (or videos with a sound track). The sound will be audible despite the silent mode setting.

Do you need any further information?

[Xavi Garcia (xavi-garcia-mena)]

Hi,
I think the behavior you see is the right one following the spec.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Sound#silent-mode

When you launch a browser that plays any sound you are explicitly playing that sound (similar to what happens when you launch the music app and start playing a song).

More information about silent mode can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SilentMode

[Xavi Garcia (xavi-garcia-mena)]

I'm moving this as invalid, please don't hesitate to reopen if you still think this is a valid bug

[Peter Velosy (petervelosy)]

Then this should be rephrased as a change request. I think the fact that there is ABSOLUTELY no option to ensure that apps DO NOT play sound UNEXPECTEDLY is unacceptable. This should either be a sound setting or a browser option, or an app permissions option, but there should be some way of reaching this functionality without the user having to carry a dummy jack plug with him.... Or there should be a dialog box, mainly in the browser, that sais "You are currently in silent mode but the website abcd would like to play sound. Would you like this site to start sound playback?" Alarms are a different thing because you set them yourself, and are well aware of the fact that they will - and should always - sound.

 I personally encountered this problem once when I wanted to look up the translation of the text of a musical work while I was at a concert, and the website which contained the text actually started playing the music. I think there is no more need to explain how embarrassing that is. Another time I wanted to look up a timetable at a bus stop and it turned out that the transport company's website had an advertisement which played back sound. Loudly. So all in all I really think that this is an issue which should have a solution at some software level.

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

Marking as wishlist/incomplete and moving to Design for feedback.

Design, please reopen the indicator-sound (Ubuntu) component of this ticket by changing it from "Incomplete" to "Triaged" if the spec changes (or if we've misunderstood the existing spec :).