Hearstead — Clear & Steady Audio

Hear every word without chasing the volume slider. Level quiet speech, soften loud peaks, and clarify tab audio locally.

Hear quiet dialogue clearly and keep sudden loud moments under control. Hearstead is a private browser volume booster and audio enhancer for Chrome. It improves audio from the website tab you choose using local audio processing—without recording or uploading what you hear. HOW IT WORKS Open a regular website with audio and click the Hearstead toolbar icon. Hearstead connects to that selected tab and opens a clean side panel where you can adjust the sound. FREE FEATURES • Volume boost from 100% to 300% • Balanced listening mode • Digital peak protection • Original and Enhanced comparison • Settings remembered for the current tab • No account required • No advertisements or analytics HEARSTEAD PREMIUM — $4.99 ONCE Premium is a one-time lifetime purchase with no subscription and no automatic renewal. Premium includes: • High Boost up to 600% • Speech mode for clearer dialogue • Night mode for quieter listening • Comfort Lock automatic volume leveling • Natural, Standard, and Strong response settings • Per-site sound profiles • Automatic profile loading after you activate Hearstead • No app-imposed saved-profile limit One Chrome installation can be active at a time. You can deactivate Premium on an old installation and activate the same license on another computer. CLEARER SPEECH Speech mode brings voices forward and reduces muddiness. It is designed for videos, online lessons, meetings, podcasts, and other dialogue-heavy content. COMFORT LOCK Comfort Lock raises quieter passages and controls sudden volume changes. It provides automatic leveling without requiring technical compressor settings. CONTROLLED HIGH BOOST Premium High Boost expands the range to 600% for unusually quiet sources. Tone shaping, stereo-linked processing, and digital peak protection remain active. Extreme amplification can reveal noise, compression artifacts, or distortion already present in the source. Start with a low system volume and increase gradually. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Audio processing happens locally in Chrome memory. Hearstead does not record, upload, sell, identify, or use audio for analytics. Optional website profiles store only the website domain and selected sound settings. Hearstead does not store complete URLs, page titles, media titles, or audio content. Premium checkout and license management are provided by Polar. License operations send the license key, checkout email, activation identifier, and necessary public product identifiers to Polar. Audio and saved website domains are never sent to Polar. COMPATIBILITY Hearstead works on supported regular Chrome website tabs after you explicitly activate it. Chrome internal pages, the Chrome Web Store, and certain protected media players cannot be processed. Hearstead affects browser-tab audio only and does not modify native applications or system-wide audio. Hearstead can improve volume consistency and intelligibility, but it cannot recreate detail missing from the original recording.