Chrome does not have any way to stop video auto play?
63 comments
·February 13, 2025gavinsyancey
Firefox blocks auto playing videos with sound by default. And you can also configure it to block all autoplay or or allow it globally, or per-website. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-autoplay
donio
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/block-autoplay has some more additional information in particular about the media.autoplay.blocking_policy pref which allows restoring the older behavior of the play intent not being sticky.
Nursie
Which is great for most stuff, but doesn't seem to stop facebook 'reels' from animating. They must do some trickery like loading a short animated image as a 'teaser' before rendering the actual video on click.
kvemkon
Using this since I can remember. But noticed another issue and still searching how to disable the video cache at all until I start to play the video and to limit it to 2-5 seconds (or 1 MB) during playing, though no chance so far.
archargelod
For youtube there is a "YouTube no Buffer"[0] extension that does precisely this - stops videos from autoplaying and buffering when you open a link.
I have this plugin, Leechblock and ublock filters (blocking any mention of shorts from the site) to make yt less addicting. And it kinda works.
0 - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-no-bu...
kvemkon
And just another issue since few months: youtube page auto-reloads/replaces itself since few seconds after opening (even if the tab is not active). The title gets replaced from the original language into English auto-translation (EN is default for browser), but I'd like to see video titles in the original language.
bad_user
The Brave browser also has a setting in “Privacy and Security” -> “Site and shields settings” -> “Additional permissions” -> “Autoplay”
You can block globally or per website.
wodenokoto
Doesn’t YouTube technically autoplay? You click a link, change page and url and a video starts playing
EduardoBautista
Video autoplay is usually allowed on a whitelist of URLs determined by the browser vendor, if I recall correctly.
YouTube is always on those whitelists.
curtisblaine
I can't try it at the moment, but I'm not sure the page is actually reloaded. I suspect YouTube is an SPA and, when you click, the url change event is captured by a router and the content of the page is merely replaced.
28304283409234
Chrome is not there to serve you. It is to serve Google.
Sabinus
I have said it before and I will say it again, it makes zero sense to browse the internet with a piece of software written by an advertising company.
caspper69
To think, they have advocated over the years to keep adding to the specs to the point that they’ve become so complex that even Microsoft, the king of this rube goldberg type shit, threw in the towel and said eff it, we’ll just use Chromium.
We should write an app browser with sensible layout and a qemu virtual machine backend. Pay the 5% hit to run actually performant native code that’s 100% sandboxed.
Couldn’t be any worse, that’s for sure.
avgd
> so complex that even Microsoft, the king of this rube goldberg type shit, threw in the towel and said eff it, we’ll just use Chromium
I believe the core reason to be different: Microsoft lost the will to compete.
You can say any number of negative things about Steve Ballmer, but at least the guy tried. He tried. He may fail, but he would try, again and again, no matter how many time he would experience losses.
When he got replaced by a bean counter Microsoft stopped trying. It isn't just browser engines they've abandoned. There is no Windows Phone anymore. Windows 11 is worse on tablets than 10. Closing down their Apple Music competitor (Groove) etc.
Recently, they've been arguing for less exclusivity on gaming consoles and releasing their games on Playstation.
If we anthropomorphized corporations, modern Microsoft is the thin skinned loser who will fold at the slightest provocation.
GrumpyNl
I use it because most of my clients use it. Chrome still has a market share of 66%.
ajkjk
okay there are some reasons ...
nomendos
So we should be using other browsers (Brave, LibreWolf, Vivaldi, Firefox, even Opera might be better overall)
theshrike79
Of those, afaik Firefox is the only one not based on Chromium.
"But but Brave..." Yea they have their own crap on top, but it's still the Chromium rendering engine.
liendolucas
There's no reason to use Chrome today. Maybe there was a reason to use it many many years ago. With plenty of options today the sane choice is to select another browser. I run Firefox even on my phone. If for some reason I need a Chrome based browser, on my phone I switch to Brave, on the desktop to Chromium. But I rarely open any of those at all as Firefox has been doing extremely well.
tim333
Google lens built in is cool.
doctor_radium
Hmm, but there are ways of streaming video that don't have traditional Play/Pause/etc. buttons. If there's no way to turn it off, how can Chrome "learn my preferences"? Maybe it can sense me swearing? Not a Chrome user and definitely not starting now. Autoplay video is one of my great annoyances on the modern web.
ivolimmen
It does listen to you but it does not react to voice commands. It just wants to know what you are saying so it can serve ads to you.
autoexec
> Chrome "learn my preferences"?
Google already gets more than enough data about your preferences without having to respect any of them.
tech234a
AutoplayerStopper [1] is still available if you set the policy to enable manifest V2 extensions [2] which should still work for a few more months.
[1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/autoplaystopper/ejd...
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1d49ud1/manif...
Sabinus
Oh, this was a feature removed by manifest v3? How coincidental and convenient for Google.
nomendos
I saw these and I and most others are not desperate to buy month or less. Chrome fully deserves to be uninstalled it is enemy-ware!
seneca
This is totally unsurprising. I'm sure Google realized that autoplaying gives them more ad revenue somehow. It was a massive mistake to allow an ad company control over your browser.
nomendos
Unsurprising shall be mass-uninstall ;-) Fully deserved!
follower
Quoting part of k1t's comment[0] for visibility:
"I do recall a Firefox discussion about how they can't 100% block videos because there will always be another way - eg do animated gifs count, or javascript that shows a rapid sequence of images [...]"
I also recall this being a justification given for auto-playing muted or audio-less video (i.e. because blocking "efficient" muted video playback will just lead to malicious actors using "less efficient" means of "image sequence" playback thus increasing the negative impact further).
On a related note, the other day I also discovered (while debugging why an audio demo didn't work the same way it did six years ago :D ) that there's now also a concept called "Sticky Activation" which can also impact "Autoplay of Media and Web Audio APIs (in particular for AudioContexts)"[1].
----
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43033814
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/User_a...
timothya
See: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay
tl;dr: The browser attempts to learn your preference for each site automatically based on how you interact with videos. You can see what it's calculated by visiting chrome://media-engagement
Terr_
> attempts to learn
Oh god, that reminds me of another piece of bullshit Chrome magic. They made a system when the browser shares signatures of forms/fields with a central server, which sends back "crowdsourced" autocompletion rules, and they've made it almost impossible for developers to stop it from doing that [0] even when it's flat-out wrong and users are complaining about inappropriate autocomplete suggestions being shown/recorded.
Over the last ~8 years developers have submitted hundreds of examples [1] of why it's a stupid feature that at least needs a way to opt-out, but Chromium devs have kept it mandatory, and I suspect it's because Google/Alphabet is somehow exploiting all that leaked metadata about what forms people visit.
Terr_
P.S.: Messing with the issue-tracker (and bringing up unpleasant memories of desperately trying to find a workaround in their source-code) I find that the two linked issue about this anti-feature rank are both in the top-15 most-voted open issues. (Rank 14 and 9, respectively.)
https://issues.chromium.org/issues?q=status:open%20votecount...
(Vote count column not displayed by default.)
loeg
Yeah, they've always claimed this but I've literally never wanted autoplay and it's never ever learned that preference, so...
Groxx
> Media Engagement Index
Solid evidence that Google knows just what I want from a browser: a taste of vomit.
nomendos
OK Chrome shall be gone/uninstalled/not-used from all my computers and shall recommend it be removed from all my friends computers with the explanation of their behavior and loss of trust and respect for us users!
bdhcuidbebe
If its youtube, change your settings, Its autoplay on default.
If its your website, just set it up like you want in the video tag.
Not sure why this post wasnt removed tho. This is just general issues you could have googled for a solution or askes a site dedicated to it such as stack overflow.
tim333
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/Disable%20HTML5%20A...
still seems to work for me?
blackeyeblitzar
I find this behavior quite annoying. I would like to be able to block auto play by default across the entire Internet. I have to imagine this is simply a way to allow Google’s ad networks to play annoying ads.
staunton
> I would like to be able to block auto play by default across the entire Internet
No problem, just use a different browser.
shever73
Use the Brave browser and `brave://settings/content/autoplay` is all you need.
What is going on with Chrome, It seems Chrome does not have any way to stop video auto play (no settings option and all extensions that used to work now are delisted from Chrome store). I tried many from the Chrome store and few that are not yet removed, simply do not work anymore. Has Google Chrome team fallen so low that they insist on autoplaying and giving no option to stop it!?!?