How to stop videos autoplaying in your browser
Sick of annoying videos and ads autoplaying in your browser? Check out this quick guide to turning them off
Sitting in a meeting or a quiet room, trying to look like you’re working on your laptop, and you accidentally click onto a web page with an autoplaying video. Before you realize what’s happening, the audio starts blaring out out of the loudspeakers and bam – your cover is blown.
The number of websites that host autoplaying videos and adverts has increased dramatically in the last few years. As well as being embarrassing, this can also be incredibly annoying if you’re listening to music or watching a movie on your computer while browsing the web. Both Facebook and Twitter have recently enabled auto play in their social feeds, as a way to increase views for brands.
However, there is a solution. No matter what browser you’re using, it is possible to disable the video auto play feature. This means you will have to click on the video and press play before you can watch it, putting the control back in your hands. Here’s what you need to do:
Chrome
- Type “chrome://chrome/settings/content” into the URL bar
- Scroll down to the plug-in section
- Select “Let me choose when to run plugin content”.
Firefox
- Type “about:config” into the URL bar
- Agree to the warning
- Type “autoplay” into the search box
- Find a preference named “media.autoplay.enabled”, which will be set to “true”
- Double-click that preference and it will change to “false”
Internet Explorer
- Click on the settings icon in the top right corner of the browser window
- Click on “Safety”
- Click on the “ActiveX Filtering” option. This will then put a tick next to the option, indicating that filtering is enabled.
