A volume booster for anyone who can’t hear the lecture
Your laptop’s volume stops at 100%. Louden takes the lecture to 200%.
You’ve maxed the volume keys and you’re still leaning in, palm cupped behind the laptop. Louden turns the tab itself up: free forever, no account, no ads. Pro takes the same dial to 600% for $9.99, one time.
The part everyone misses on the exam is — chapter nine, section three: the study you were about to skip.
System volume: 100. Player volume: 100. And you’re replaying the same ten seconds to catch one sentence. The volume keys have nothing left to give.
The quiet podcast, the muffled Zoom recording, the lecture mixed too low — Louden boosts the tab itself, free forever. No trial clock, no account to make.
Every tab you’ve boosted keeps its own dial. Turn the standup — the one colleague on a laptop mic — all the way up, and leave your music where it is.
Free ends here, at the padlock — twice the system maximum, with no clock running. Everything below this mark costs nothing.
Pro rescales the same dial to three times the free ceiling, and deals in the equalizer. One small one-time price — that is the whole list.
A soft peak limiter rides every boost, free tier included — louder, without the crackle.
The whole interface, actual size: one dial, your boosted tabs, and the equalizer. This is Pro at full boost — the free tier is the same popup, stopping at the padlock. Tabs you haven’t boosted yet show a Switch pill instead of a dial: Chrome only lets a boost start on the tab you open Louden on.
Get the free build Load unpacked, Chrome 119+ · no account, no adsHow it works
One click, four permissions, zero servers.
Click the Louden icon on a tab and Chrome hands that tab’s audio to a local Web Audio graph: a gain stage for the boost, ten filters for the EQ, and a peak limiter to stop clipping. The tab keeps playing — just louder.
Chrome requires that first click, which doubles as your guarantee: Louden cannot touch a tab you didn’t ask it to boost.
- Your tab’s audioA lecture, a call, a video — anything audible
- tabCaptureStarts only from your click on the icon
- Gain, ×1 to ×6The boost: 100% up to 600%
- 10-band equalizer±12 dB from 32 Hz to 16 kHz (Pro)
- Peak limiterCatches spikes so loud stays clean
- Back out your speakersSame tab, same video, more volume
The numbers
Six numbers. The first one is free forever.
Double Chrome’s maximum on any tab that lets itself be captured. Forever, at $0.
Six times the stock maximum, with the limiter riding the peaks.
±12 dB from 32 Hz to 16 kHz, with bass presets.
tabCapture, tabs, storage, offscreen. No host access, no content scripts.
No analytics, no ad SDK, no data leaving your machine.
A one-time purchase, not a subscription. Priced, built, and not yet on sale.
Pricing
Two tiers. One is $0, forever.
- Boost any audible tab to 200% — except chrome:// pages and DRM players
- An independent dial for every tab you’ve boosted
- Soft peak limiter, always on
- Boost % on the toolbar badge
- One-click reset, per tab and per row
- No ads, no tracking. Ever.
- Everything in Free
- Boost to 600%
- 10-band EQ with bass presets
- Per-site volume memory
- Keyboard shortcuts — Alt+↑, Alt+↓, Alt+0, for tabs you’ve already boosted
The honest part
The fine print, in plain type.
- 01A boost starts from your click, not from ambush.
Chrome only lets a capture begin on the tab you open Louden on — its rule for tab audio, and a good one. Rows for other tabs show a Switch pill; tabs that are already boosted adjust from anywhere.
- 02Chrome’s own pages stay quiet.
chrome:// screens and the Web Store block capture at the browser level. Louden tells you with a toast instead of failing silently.
- 03Boosts end with the browser.
A capture cannot survive a restart — picking the tab back up takes one fresh click. Pro remembers the volume you used per site and offers it back.
- 04DRM streams keep their native volume.
Players that block capture keep playing untouched. Nothing breaks; it just stays at 100%.
- 05600% is loud, not hi-fi.
Laptop speakers still obey physics. The limiter stops the crackle, but start at 150–200% — that fixes most quiet lectures — and go higher only when a tab demands it.
- 06Pro is not on sale yet.
The upgrade button in the popup says “Checkout — coming soon,” and it means it. Everything on the free side — the boost, per-tab dials, the limiter, the badge — is finished, and free forever.
- 07Chrome knows a tab is being captured.
While Louden is boosting, Chrome routes that tab’s audio through it, so the browser’s own tab-audio indicator may show a capture running. Site volume sliders keep working normally.
Free on Chrome
Louden isn’t in the Web Store yet. Installing takes a minute.
- Open
chrome://extensionsin Chrome 119 or newer. - Turn on Developer mode, top right.
- Click Load unpacked and pick your Louden folder.
- Play something quiet, click the Louden icon, turn the dial.
Until the Web Store listing goes live, the folder itself comes by email — write to support@louden.app for the current build. No account, no sign-in, no first-run wizard.