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I want to completely totally and utterly prevent any and all videos from ever auto-playing when I go to websites. Nothing seems to work.

gregshep
gregshep
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I find it very annoying when I go a news websites and a little video box starts playing as I scroll down while reading an article. I don't want the stupid video, I want to actually read the damn article. How do I totally and completely prevent any videos whatsoever from ever playing automatically? I have already installed the plug-in that's supposed to prevent it, but it doesn't do a thing, and I downgraded to version 56 from Quantum since for some idiotic reason you can't do a thing about it in Quantum. Any ideas?

I find it very annoying when I go a news websites and a little video box starts playing as I scroll down while reading an article. I don't want the stupid video, I want to actually read the damn article. How do I totally and completely prevent any videos whatsoever from ever playing automatically? I have already installed the plug-in that's supposed to prevent it, but it doesn't do a thing, and I downgraded to version 56 from Quantum since for some idiotic reason you can't do a thing about it in Quantum. Any ideas?

All Replies (4)

Moses
Moses
  • Moderator
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Go to about:config<i> in Firefox, click the warning to proceed, and toggle media.autoplay.enabled to false. Note: this will prevent ALL videos from autoplaying, including Gfycat links which you may have to right click --> Show controls

pointer2null
pointer2null
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media.autoplay.enabled doesn't work if the video is started by a javascript call to .play() Lots of news sites use this workaround to start adfull videos each time you vist the page. One bad offender is https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/

Moses
Moses
  • Moderator
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pointer2null,

its been a while since I've seen a video play when reading a news article. Have you installed uBlock Origin and testing it out again? I get no mini-player popup when reading https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/lengthy-delays-m32-after-collision-1419696. On https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/lotto-results-winning-national-lottery-1419555, I do get a message saying that the video will be autostarted with a countdown but that is easily dismissed.

pointer2null
pointer2null
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Hi Moses I must admit I haven't seen a pop-out video for a while either - I've got adblock plus. I tried uBlock but was unable to configure it correctly and while it blocked ad's and videos it also blocked login pages and forum operation.

It's the autoplay videos with the countdown that are the most irritating. I just wish there was a way to prevent any video in any format from being started automatically or via a countdown.