11 ms·

Google Chrome’s next update will finally block autoplay videos that have sound

101 points by john58 9y ago

dawnerd 9y ago
And you just know someone will find a workaround because annoying site visitors is SO in right now.
- FreeFull 9y ago
  Maybe have a separate autoplaying <audio> element, if it won't be blocked too
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Worst case put it on click after a full screen signup modal that the same sites usually show anyways.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rainbowmverse 9y ago
I don't want any auto-playing videos, sound or not. They always seem to pop up next to the text I came there to read. I can't focus with that.
- idonotknowwhy 9y ago
  Then use Firefox :)
  - deadlycrayon 9y ago
    +1 It's trivially easy to stop ALL media from autoplaying - including gifs! It's wonderful (but sometimes jarring when I expect a gif to be playing already)
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    Firefox also lets you mute a tab without switching to the tab.
    - positr0n 9y ago
      Chrome does too. Just right click on it and "Mute site" will mute the domain. Forever I think.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    I tried it again recently. The mobile app is just too slow to start, and I'm currently stuck with a phone with too little memory to not autokill stuff. I realize Chrome's apparent snappiness is probably due to some questionable and likely anti-competitive integrations by Google, like Microsoft in the 2000s.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    Also a consideration if hording tabs. I am mildly annoyed by the memory usage taking almost 8 gb of ram for a mere 70 tabs [1]. I thought chrome had superior history search indexing full text once. Was that feature culled? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16560655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16560655
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  There's already a flag for that: chrome://flags Autoplay policy.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
    I can't think of one reason why it shouldn't be the default behavior.
  - drewg123 9y ago
    However, it does not seem to work in most cases that I've found. I was super excited when it arrived, but I'm still hunting down the domains of auto-play videos and adding them to a blacklist manually. The choices seem to be "document user gesture", "user gesture is required", "no user gesture is required", and "default". There needs to be a "never autoplay any media"
    - pgrote 9y ago
      I thought I was doing something wrong when I set the flag. Thank you for confirming it really doesn't work.
      - jasonkostempski 9y ago
        Guess I should have just preached "use Firefox" like I usually do. That's what I get for trying to see things from the other side for once.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  Same here. However for me it's not only an annoyance, but since I'm on a metered connection (LTE with severe throttling after 50 GB only avoidable by buying extra volume), this is costing me real money. Opening a Bloomberg article in the background will happily autplay a series of videos I may not notice. And that's with uBlock Origin installed. I just opened such an article and in the 5 minute window since I did so, the page consumed a cool 100 MB for a 2:20 video. It obviously gets worse with longer videos.
ordinaryperson 9y ago
I don't see them turning off auto-playing videos on YouTube (after finishing watching one) -- seems a little hypocritical. Netflix is now in this game too, auto-playing trailers as you scroll titles with no way to turn the feature off. Clearly force-feeding users videos boosts traffic (or they wouldn't do it) but it annoys, what? At least 50% of users?
- Laforet 9y ago
  the option to turn off autoplay is clearly visible on top of your recommended queue
  - dharmab 9y ago
    That option is to automatically switch to a new video after completing the current video. The link is about videos that start playing when you open a link- in YouTube's case, the first video in the queue.
- loeg 9y ago
  They have a reasonably coherent generalization planned for this[0]. Chrome will track a user's actual video consumption habits per origin, and compare it to the user's total visits to that origin. Video consumption is judged to be intentional if play is longer than 7 seconds, audio is unmuted, the tab is active, and the video is bigger than 200x140 px. Then, if the ratio of actual video consumption to visits is high enough, Chrome desktop will allow autoplay. (My read is that Chrome mobile will wholly disable autoplay.) If you always pause / mute playback on news sites but let Youtube autoplay, Chrome will learn to allow Youtube to autoplay. If you always pause/mute playback on Youtube, Chrome will learn not to autoplay Youtube. You can see what inferences Chrome has made at chrome://media-engagement . (I'm not a Google employee nor a Chrome developer and may be accidentally misrepresenting this policy, but I've attempted to describe it accurately.) [0]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...
  - brewdad 9y ago
lostmsu 9y ago
Perhaps browsers just need to ask users if they want audio before letting sites play it. Like a permission.
- aiCeivi9 9y ago
  Doesn't scale. Firefox is already introducing option to block "notification permission" requests as all sites spam with it, even when it makes little to none sense.
jehlakj 9y ago
Higher priority should be to mute websites that don't have media content. Two ideas: Either make it permission based like location, or have a master volume setting for sounds like rely on javascript (excluding html5, flash, etc.). I'm not 100% sure about the details for the latter, but that'd be very convenient. I'm almost always caught off guard when a customer service widget pops up on the bottom right corner of the screen with an annoying bell sound.

101 points by john58 9y ago

dawnerd 9y ago

And you just know someone will find a workaround because annoying site visitors is SO in right now.

FreeFull 9y ago
Maybe have a separate autoplaying <audio> element, if it won't be blocked too
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Worst case put it on click after a full screen signup modal that the same sites usually show anyways.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

rainbowmverse 9y ago

I don't want any auto-playing videos, sound or not. They always seem to pop up next to the text I came there to read. I can't focus with that.

idonotknowwhy 9y ago
Then use Firefox :)
- deadlycrayon 9y ago
  +1 It's trivially easy to stop ALL media from autoplaying - including gifs! It's wonderful (but sometimes jarring when I expect a gif to be playing already)
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  Firefox also lets you mute a tab without switching to the tab.
  - positr0n 9y ago
    Chrome does too. Just right click on it and "Mute site" will mute the domain. Forever I think.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  I tried it again recently. The mobile app is just too slow to start, and I'm currently stuck with a phone with too little memory to not autokill stuff. I realize Chrome's apparent snappiness is probably due to some questionable and likely anti-competitive integrations by Google, like Microsoft in the 2000s.
- posterboy 9y ago
  Also a consideration if hording tabs. I am mildly annoyed by the memory usage taking almost 8 gb of ram for a mere 70 tabs [1]. I thought chrome had superior history search indexing full text once. Was that feature culled? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16560655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16560655
jasonkostempski 9y ago
There's already a flag for that: chrome://flags Autoplay policy.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  I can't think of one reason why it shouldn't be the default behavior.
- drewg123 9y ago
  However, it does not seem to work in most cases that I've found. I was super excited when it arrived, but I'm still hunting down the domains of auto-play videos and adding them to a blacklist manually. The choices seem to be "document user gesture", "user gesture is required", "no user gesture is required", and "default". There needs to be a "never autoplay any media"
  - pgrote 9y ago
    I thought I was doing something wrong when I set the flag. Thank you for confirming it really doesn't work.
    - jasonkostempski 9y ago
      Guess I should have just preached "use Firefox" like I usually do. That's what I get for trying to see things from the other side for once.
thirdsun 9y ago
Same here. However for me it's not only an annoyance, but since I'm on a metered connection (LTE with severe throttling after 50 GB only avoidable by buying extra volume), this is costing me real money. Opening a Bloomberg article in the background will happily autplay a series of videos I may not notice. And that's with uBlock Origin installed. I just opened such an article and in the 5 minute window since I did so, the page consumed a cool 100 MB for a 2:20 video. It obviously gets worse with longer videos.

ordinaryperson 9y ago

I don't see them turning off auto-playing videos on YouTube (after finishing watching one) -- seems a little hypocritical. Netflix is now in this game too, auto-playing trailers as you scroll titles with no way to turn the feature off. Clearly force-feeding users videos boosts traffic (or they wouldn't do it) but it annoys, what? At least 50% of users?

Laforet 9y ago
the option to turn off autoplay is clearly visible on top of your recommended queue
- dharmab 9y ago
  That option is to automatically switch to a new video after completing the current video. The link is about videos that start playing when you open a link- in YouTube's case, the first video in the queue.
loeg 9y ago
They have a reasonably coherent generalization planned for this[0]. Chrome will track a user's actual video consumption habits per origin, and compare it to the user's total visits to that origin. Video consumption is judged to be intentional if play is longer than 7 seconds, audio is unmuted, the tab is active, and the video is bigger than 200x140 px. Then, if the ratio of actual video consumption to visits is high enough, Chrome desktop will allow autoplay. (My read is that Chrome mobile will wholly disable autoplay.) If you always pause / mute playback on news sites but let Youtube autoplay, Chrome will learn to allow Youtube to autoplay. If you always pause/mute playback on Youtube, Chrome will learn not to autoplay Youtube. You can see what inferences Chrome has made at chrome://media-engagement . (I'm not a Google employee nor a Chrome developer and may be accidentally misrepresenting this policy, but I've attempted to describe it accurately.) [0]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...
- brewdad 9y ago

lostmsu 9y ago

Perhaps browsers just need to ask users if they want audio before letting sites play it. Like a permission.

aiCeivi9 9y ago
Doesn't scale. Firefox is already introducing option to block "notification permission" requests as all sites spam with it, even when it makes little to none sense.

jehlakj 9y ago

Higher priority should be to mute websites that don't have media content. Two ideas: Either make it permission based like location, or have a master volume setting for sounds like rely on javascript (excluding html5, flash, etc.). I'm not 100% sure about the details for the latter, but that'd be very convenient. I'm almost always caught off guard when a customer service widget pops up on the bottom right corner of the screen with an annoying bell sound.