Boring Meeting Alarm

Boring Meeting Alarm is a free browser tool that monitors a meeting tab you share and alerts you the moment its audio stays silent for too long. Useful for video calls where the host wraps up while you've stepped away. Everything runs locally — no audio leaves your browser.

Idle

Current volume —

Alert after silence of seconds Silence threshold — Lower = more sensitive. Watch the volume bar while talking to pick a value just below your normal level. Play alarm sound on trigger Enable system notifications

How to use

Click "Start Monitoring".
In the screen-share dialog, choose the tab where your meeting is running.
Make sure the "Share tab audio" checkbox is ticked, then click Share.

Works best in Chrome / Edge / Brave on desktop. Tab audio capture is unavailable in Firefox and limited on Safari.

Frequently asked questions

What is Boring Meeting Alarm?

Boring Meeting Alarm is a free browser tool that listens to the audio of a meeting tab you select via the screen-share dialog. When the audio level stays below a threshold for longer than the duration you configure, it fires a modal, a system notification, an alarm sound, and a tab title flash. It's designed for video calls where the meeting wraps up but you've stepped away.

Does it work with Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams?

It works with any meeting that runs in a browser tab — Google Meet, Microsoft Teams (web app), Zoom (web client), Whereby, Around, Discord (web), and any other browser-based call. Native desktop apps like the Zoom or Teams installer apps are not supported because their audio does not pass through a browser tab.

How does it detect silence?

When you share a tab, the page captures its audio stream via the getDisplayMedia Web API, routes it through an AnalyserNode from the Web Audio API, and computes the RMS volume in dB on a 200 ms loop. It triggers when the level stays below your threshold for the duration you set. Only volume is measured — nothing is recorded.

Is my meeting audio uploaded anywhere?

No. All audio analysis happens locally in your browser. There is no backend, no recording, no upload, and no third-party processing of the audio stream. You can verify by reading the source on GitHub or by checking your browser DevTools network panel — no audio data leaves the page.

Why does it not work in Firefox?

Firefox does not yet support audio capture from a tab via getDisplayMedia({ audio: true }). The "Share tab audio" checkbox does not appear in the Firefox screen-share dialog. Use a Chromium-based browser like Chrome, Edge, Brave, or Arc. Safari support is limited and not officially tested.

Does it keep working when the tab is in the background?

Yes. The AudioContext keeps running at audio-thread priority even when the page is backgrounded. The polling timer gets throttled by the browser to about once per second, but since silence durations are configured in seconds (30 by default), the precision is more than enough. You can leave the tool running in another tab and focus on your meeting.