Google Releases Cool New Chrome Extension To Share URLs Through Audio Signals

Google has released a cool new Chrome extension, Tone, that allows to share the url to nearby computers via audio signals.

The new extension will use microphones to pick up the sound signals and opens the shared urls automatically. The Google Tone can share any url with devices as long as they are in range.

The only constraint is that the devices should be within the earshot distance as they use the audio signal to transmit information.

However, this is not the first of its kind of extension. Earlier, an Android and iOS app called Chirp works on the same principle as Google Tone. The Chirp app was released two years ago.

"The initial prototype used an efficient audio transmission scheme that sounded terrible, so we played it beyond the range of human hearing," noted software engineer Boris Smus and researcher Alex Kaufmann posted on Google Research blog.

To use this, users need to install the free Google Chrome extension and need to be signed in the Google account. To receive a URL with Google Tone, Chrome needs to keep your microphone on and it might not work loud spaces, over a distance, with a poor Internet connection, or on computers without a microphone or with a microphone incapable of detecting sound broadcast by Google Tone.