Audio boost in Video Controls Plus raises a video's own sound up to 400% without changing your system volume. Turning your laptop volume all the way up helps a little, and it makes every other sound on the laptop louder too. Press Ctrl + Alt + U to raise the boost and Ctrl + Alt + Y to lower it. It needs a connected account and does not work on protected streaming video such as Netflix or Disney+.
Press Ctrl + Alt + U. Each press raises the boost by 20%, from the player's normal 100% up to 400%. The new level shows on the page as you press.
For a lecture recorded from the back of a room, 2 presses take it to 140%. If the speaker is still hard to hear, press again and stop when the voice sits at the level of the last video you watched.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Y to come back down 20% at a time. It stops at 100%, which is the video as it was.
The same controls are on the widget's Audio tab, if you'd rather drag than press.
The sound was quiet when it was recorded, and the player's 100% is only as loud as the file.
One is a webinar where the speaker sat far from the microphone. Another is an old upload nobody ever leveled. Your laptop volume raises everything at once, from the next notification to the music in another tab.
Boost works on the video instead. It raises that one video's sound and leaves your system volume where it was. Every other tab stays put.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
Ctrl + Alt + U | Boost up by 20% |
Ctrl + Alt + Y | Boost down by 20% |
Ctrl + Alt + N | Normalize on or off |
All 3 can be moved to other keys in Settings, on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
It makes the gap between the loudest and the quietest parts smaller.
Turn it on with Ctrl + Alt + N for a video where the speaker whispers and the intro music does not, and the jump from the music to the voice gets a lot less sharp. Past 200%, the boost message adds "Normalize recommended" while normalize is off, because a big boost makes the loud parts very loud too.
That is the right order for a quiet lecture: boost first, a press or two at a time, then normalize if the jingle at the start makes you reach for the mouse.
No. The boost level starts at 100% again each time a page loads, so press Ctrl + Alt + U again on the next lecture.
What Settings does remember is the player's own volume and mute, per site. Set YouTube quiet and a course site loud, and each one comes back the way you left it. Mute counts too. The Remember Volume card is in Settings, on the Video Features tab, and it covers the player's volume only, not the boost.
It does a lot more than make a video louder: the widget's Audio tab has Advanced Audio buttons for bass boost, noise reduction, vocal isolation, spatial audio, the compressor, karaoke mode, a pitch preset and equalizer presets.
Noise reduction is the one to try on a lecture with a fan running in the room. It filters background noise, so the boost has less of the fan to raise along with the speaker.
Audio boost needs a connected account. The whole Audio tab does too. Signed out, the audio keys do nothing. They say so when you press them.
Protected streaming video is the other limit. On Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Hulu, Max and other services that protect their video, the extension does not touch the audio at all, because routing that audio through the boost would break playback.
At 400%, a loud video is very loud. Raise it a little at a time, and lower it again with Ctrl + Alt + Y before you move from a quiet lecture to a music video in the next tab.
The Audio boost page in the docs lists every audio control and its key. The keys step by 20%, and the slider on the widget's Audio tab moves in steps of 10%.
Last updated 2026-10-24 by the Video Controls Plus team.