Avoid being startled by websites playing sounds

John Gray · Post by **John Gray** » 20 Jan 2018, 09:18

More and more news websites are playing sounds/music/videos when you display one of their webpages.
I find this deeply infuriating.

If this playing is done via HTML5 a possible solution in Firefox is to go into
about:config
and in the resultant Configuration editor scroll down to the
media.autoplay.enabled
preference and click on it to turn true to false

Seems to work for me!

Post by **HansV** » 20 Jan 2018, 09:38

Thanks!

Post by **Rudi** » 20 Jan 2018, 10:17

Thanks John! Handy.

To see how to disable automatic video playing in the Chrome browser, see this thread, here.

Post by **StuartR** » 20 Jan 2018, 13:46

Very helpful. Thank you.

Rebel · Post by **Rebel** » 20 Jan 2018, 16:18

Thanks John. I have this turned off (via an extension) in Chrome, and now FF is modified as well.

ChrisGreaves · Post by **ChrisGreaves** » 20 Jan 2018, 20:06

John Gray wrote:media.autoplay.enabled preference and click on it to turn true to false

Moderators:
Please extend John Gray's account by one full year and send me the bill!

stuck · Post by **stuck** » 31 Mar 2018, 11:39

I've come across a less than helpful side effect of making this change...

When I have media.autoplay.enabled set to true then Vimeo videos will not play. The page loads all right but nothing will make the video start. Change media.autoplay.enabled back to false and the page works as expected.

Ken

Post by **HansV** » 31 Mar 2018, 12:15

I hadn't noticed that yet, but you're correct. That's a pity - Vimeo has many excellent videos.

Rebel · Post by **Rebel** » 31 Mar 2018, 15:13

What happens if you click the "Pause" button and then click the "Play" button? It works for me.
edited to add

but only in Chrome - not Firefox. Too bad indeed.

Post by **HansV** » 31 Mar 2018, 15:21

Alas, that doesn't work for me. (It does work on several other media sites)

stuck · Post by **stuck** » 31 Mar 2018, 17:20

Rebel wrote:What happens if you click the "Pause" button and then click the "Play" button?... ...not Firefox. Too bad indeed.

Exactly.

I don't have Chrome installed, never seen the need. I've used FF since v1 and this minor quirk is certainly not going to make me ditch it now.

Ken

Rebel · Post by **Rebel** » 01 Apr 2018, 05:27

stuck wrote: Exactly.
I don't have Chrome installed, never seen the need. I've used FF since v1 and this minor quirk is certainly not going to make me ditch it now.
Ken

I certainly wasn't suggesting that anyone should "ditch" FF Ken. I was simply pointing out that the "click on pause, click on play" method works with Chrome, but unfortunately not with FF.

stuck · Post by **stuck** » 01 Apr 2018, 11:28

I guess this explains why the FF default for this setting is to allow autoplay, they've yet to fix all the bugs in it when it's set prevent autoplay.

Argus · Post by **Argus** » 01 Apr 2018, 13:14

stuck wrote:I've come across a less than helpful side effect of making this change...

When I have media.autoplay.enabled set to true then Vimeo videos will not play. The page loads all right but nothing will make the video start. Change media.autoplay.enabled back to false and the page works as expected.

Ken

That’s odd. For me it's the opposite, or am I missing something here? Set to True and they will play, and with the value set to False some/many will not play.

It depends on the video, it seems.

True or False, it will play.
Progressbar
An Object at Rest

Will play when value set to True, but not when set to False.
Forsvaret - “Minus 5”

It seems like some older videos are OK. Still, it's the opposite of Ken's experience, unless I'm missing something.
(They are also in a large group of sites that need cookies, but that's a different matter.)

Post by **HansV** » 01 Apr 2018, 13:36

I suspect that Ken switched true and false in his post. It doesn't make sense that videos wouldn't play if media.autoplay.enabled is set to true.

I have set media.autoplay.enabled to false, and the first two videos that you mention will play, the last one doesn't, just as you report.

stuck · Post by **stuck** » 01 Apr 2018, 15:26

HansV wrote:I suspect that Ken switched true and false in his post...

Oops!

Correct, what I really meant was that setting media.autoplay.enabled set to true, not only prevents autoplay on Vimeo it prevents play completely. Clicking 'pause' and then 'play' doesn't help, the video would not play until I restored media.autoplay.enabled to true (the default).

I don't know if this applies to all Vimeo videos but it did for those I was trying to view the other day.

Sorry for the confusion.

Ken

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