9 ms·

Firefox banning noisy video from autoplaying

111 points by rayraegah 8y ago

carmate383 8y ago
Am I the only one to feel that autoplay video should be disabled by default, ESPECIALLY if the video isn't even being rendered inside the visible portion of the viewport when it begins playing? I am _sick to death_ of random noise coming from web pages (namely, news articles) and having to try and find the source of it.
- notatoad 8y ago
  Autoplay video with no audio track is being used as a lower-bandwidth alternative to gifs, and it's great for that. Firefox's solution is a good one - don't ban autoplaying video, ban autoplaying video that includes sound, unless it is specifically allowed for that site.
  - carmate383 8y ago
    But why should a video automatically _begin_ playing if I can't see it?
    - moreira 8y ago
      The same reason a GIF begins playing if you can't see it. As mentioned, video without audio is being used as a GIF replacement; it makes sense for it to behave the same way.
      - darkpuma 8y ago
        Why should a gif begin playing if you can't see it?
        moreira 8y ago
        I didn't say that it should, only that no-audio videos behaving like GIFs seems like a good idea for bandwidth. Otherwise people will just use GIFs.
  - rocky1138 8y ago
    I'd rather them go all the way then offer us a whitelist.
  - swiley 8y ago
    That’s strange, very small animated gifs are often smaller than the equivalent video, especially ones with low color counts.
    - Thorrez 8y ago
      There are tons of videos that aren't very tiny, and that have large color counts. notatoad is talking about those.
- jaredsohn 8y ago
  If you want help identifying where the sounds came from and use Chrome, check out a chrome extension I built (http://www.mutetab.com http://www.mutetab.com) which will let you see which tabs most recently played a sound.
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    Firefox already does this better than Chrome, tabs that are playing sound have a speaker icon next to them, and can be muted without switching to the tab by clicking the speaker. However, this looks like a great extension, since I normally have 6-10 windows open across desktops, and have definitely played the "hunt the tab" game to find the offending window. A central place to find this is great, but I really wish Chrome by default had some sort of indicator for sound.
    - jaredsohn 8y ago
      > tabs that are playing sound have a speaker icon next to them, and can be muted without switching to the tab by clicking the speaker. Chrome has that, too, but you need to right-click->mute to mute. Mentioned my extension since it should make it easier to find the noisy tab because of the centralization, but haven't ported it to Firefox.
      - zrobotics 8y ago
        Oddly, my chrome install (win 10,very seldom used) does not do this. Just tested with both YouTube & NPR playing audio, I get no indication of audio playing. I guess it's time to play sysadmin.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      Chrome also has a speaker icon in the tab. You can mute it with right clicking => Mute site.
- N_trglctc_joe 8y ago
  Not at all, and autoplay is way too difficult to completely prevent. Even on Firefox with media.autoplay.default set to 1, noscript, and UBO some sites still play video without my interaction. News sites are the worst about it; I'm considering switching some of my web usage to a text-only browser. [edit] After perusing the comments of the article, I took the advice of "ryanja" and also set the following to false in about:config, and it seems to have been effective. media.autoplay.allow-extension-background-pages media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground
zrobotics 8y ago
>>Firefox will also allow muted video to play back automatically. Good lord, they didn't go far enough with this. IME, muted video is almost always a waste of bandwidth that I don't care to see anyway. Local news sites seem to be the worst with this, where they will autoplay the video muted on the same page as the article. As someone who occasionally operates off of a limited-bandwith connection, I get more-and-more frustrated with the modern web every day. If I'm clicking on a local news site's article, I expect to just read the article. 9 times out of 10, I scroll past a muted video that has tried to play advertisements, and I will be finished reading the article where the video is 30% finished. I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config (which, besides preventing chrome monopoly is why I use FireFox), but most users will never adjust any of those settings. How much power globally is wasted burning CPU cycles to render this garbage content?
- rocky1138 8y ago
  http://lite.cnn.com/en http://lite.cnn.com/en
- the8472 8y ago
  > I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config media.autoplay.allow-muted = false and most users probably like their not-gifs to stay animated. webm playback is also more energy-efficient than gif playback, especially when hardware-acelerated.
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    On mobile, I'd much rather save my data and have to click before a "GIF" starts playing than waste data. At least on Verizon, data is expensive AF.
  - nhebb 8y ago
    > media.autoplay.allow-muted = false Which doesn't seem to work on many sites I visit. ESPN's NBA scoreboard, for example, will now automatically play videos in the sidebar. Firefox changed media.autoplay.default from a bool to an integer several versions ago, and ever since, I can't figure out how to get videos not to autoplay. I wish there were a simple, "Don't play videos until I click on them" setting so I didn't have to guess at what config settings to toggle.
commoner 8y ago
To block all video (both noisy and silent) from autoplaying on Firefox 66 or later: 1) Go to about:config 2) Set media.autoplay.default to 1 3) Set media.autoplay.allow-muted to false 4) Set media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed to false This works on both the desktop and Android versions.
low_key 8y ago
Now if we could just block the autoplaying Netflix menu video...
jimjimjim 8y ago
In my opinion, Firefox has regained the crown as the best browser. There really arn't that many disadvantages to it while having many benefits.
musicale 8y ago
Autoplay is a monstrosity and it seems like a shocking design flaw that it can't easily be stopped. For example, Safari's "Never Auto-Play" setting simply doesn't work. It seems like <canvas> animation should be blockable (e.g. make it so that canvas pixels can't be altered without permission) and even old-school html animation should be blockable. Perhaps web sites with utter contempt for their users will decide to render all of their text into a canvas so they can trick you into watching video ads; "in order to view the New York Times, you must enable canvas animation and webassembly so that we can violate your video autoplay setting" - at which point I guess browsers will have to include an AI system that uses some sort of image processing and recognition to block stuff that doesn't look like text or static images.
reneberlin 8y ago
Autoplaying videos is the new: 'midi-music blarring at you' from the 90s. Everytime this happens to me on mobile i can't decide to chuckle or cry. Without proper adjusted settings and addons no one can surf the web unharmed anymore. The web has become a hostile place. I mean silently playing videos in the background to gain profits from advertisers while costing you your data plan is burning real money. A kind of money transfer, but: unpretty.

111 points by rayraegah 8y ago

Am I the only one to feel that autoplay video should be disabled by default, ESPECIALLY if the video isn't even being rendered inside the visible portion of the viewport when it begins playing? I am _sick to death_ of random noise coming from web pages (namely, news articles) and having to try and find the source of it.

notatoad 8y ago
Autoplay video with no audio track is being used as a lower-bandwidth alternative to gifs, and it's great for that. Firefox's solution is a good one - don't ban autoplaying video, ban autoplaying video that includes sound, unless it is specifically allowed for that site.
- carmate383 8y ago
  But why should a video automatically _begin_ playing if I can't see it?
  - moreira 8y ago
    The same reason a GIF begins playing if you can't see it. As mentioned, video without audio is being used as a GIF replacement; it makes sense for it to behave the same way.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      Why should a gif begin playing if you can't see it?
      - moreira 8y ago
        I didn't say that it should, only that no-audio videos behaving like GIFs seems like a good idea for bandwidth. Otherwise people will just use GIFs.
- rocky1138 8y ago
  I'd rather them go all the way then offer us a whitelist.
- swiley 8y ago
  That’s strange, very small animated gifs are often smaller than the equivalent video, especially ones with low color counts.
  - Thorrez 8y ago
    There are tons of videos that aren't very tiny, and that have large color counts. notatoad is talking about those.
jaredsohn 8y ago
If you want help identifying where the sounds came from and use Chrome, check out a chrome extension I built (http://www.mutetab.com http://www.mutetab.com) which will let you see which tabs most recently played a sound.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  Firefox already does this better than Chrome, tabs that are playing sound have a speaker icon next to them, and can be muted without switching to the tab by clicking the speaker. However, this looks like a great extension, since I normally have 6-10 windows open across desktops, and have definitely played the "hunt the tab" game to find the offending window. A central place to find this is great, but I really wish Chrome by default had some sort of indicator for sound.
  - jaredsohn 8y ago
    > tabs that are playing sound have a speaker icon next to them, and can be muted without switching to the tab by clicking the speaker. Chrome has that, too, but you need to right-click->mute to mute. Mentioned my extension since it should make it easier to find the noisy tab because of the centralization, but haven't ported it to Firefox.
    - zrobotics 8y ago
      Oddly, my chrome install (win 10,very seldom used) does not do this. Just tested with both YouTube & NPR playing audio, I get no indication of audio playing. I guess it's time to play sysadmin.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    Chrome also has a speaker icon in the tab. You can mute it with right clicking => Mute site.
N_trglctc_joe 8y ago
Not at all, and autoplay is way too difficult to completely prevent. Even on Firefox with media.autoplay.default set to 1, noscript, and UBO some sites still play video without my interaction. News sites are the worst about it; I'm considering switching some of my web usage to a text-only browser. [edit] After perusing the comments of the article, I took the advice of "ryanja" and also set the following to false in about:config, and it seems to have been effective. media.autoplay.allow-extension-background-pages media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground

zrobotics 8y ago

>>Firefox will also allow muted video to play back automatically. Good lord, they didn't go far enough with this. IME, muted video is almost always a waste of bandwidth that I don't care to see anyway. Local news sites seem to be the worst with this, where they will autoplay the video muted on the same page as the article. As someone who occasionally operates off of a limited-bandwith connection, I get more-and-more frustrated with the modern web every day. If I'm clicking on a local news site's article, I expect to just read the article. 9 times out of 10, I scroll past a muted video that has tried to play advertisements, and I will be finished reading the article where the video is 30% finished. I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config (which, besides preventing chrome monopoly is why I use FireFox), but most users will never adjust any of those settings. How much power globally is wasted burning CPU cycles to render this garbage content?

rocky1138 8y ago
http://lite.cnn.com/en http://lite.cnn.com/en
the8472 8y ago
> I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config media.autoplay.allow-muted = false and most users probably like their not-gifs to stay animated. webm playback is also more energy-efficient than gif playback, especially when hardware-acelerated.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  On mobile, I'd much rather save my data and have to click before a "GIF" starts playing than waste data. At least on Verizon, data is expensive AF.
- nhebb 8y ago
  > media.autoplay.allow-muted = false Which doesn't seem to work on many sites I visit. ESPN's NBA scoreboard, for example, will now automatically play videos in the sidebar. Firefox changed media.autoplay.default from a bool to an integer several versions ago, and ever since, I can't figure out how to get videos not to autoplay. I wish there were a simple, "Don't play videos until I click on them" setting so I didn't have to guess at what config settings to toggle.

commoner 8y ago

To block all video (both noisy and silent) from autoplaying on Firefox 66 or later: 1) Go to about:config 2) Set media.autoplay.default to 1 3) Set media.autoplay.allow-muted to false 4) Set media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed to false This works on both the desktop and Android versions.

low_key 8y ago

Now if we could just block the autoplaying Netflix menu video...

jimjimjim 8y ago

In my opinion, Firefox has regained the crown as the best browser. There really arn't that many disadvantages to it while having many benefits.

musicale 8y ago

Autoplay is a monstrosity and it seems like a shocking design flaw that it can't easily be stopped. For example, Safari's "Never Auto-Play" setting simply doesn't work. It seems like <canvas> animation should be blockable (e.g. make it so that canvas pixels can't be altered without permission) and even old-school html animation should be blockable. Perhaps web sites with utter contempt for their users will decide to render all of their text into a canvas so they can trick you into watching video ads; "in order to view the New York Times, you must enable canvas animation and webassembly so that we can violate your video autoplay setting" - at which point I guess browsers will have to include an AI system that uses some sort of image processing and recognition to block stuff that doesn't look like text or static images.

reneberlin 8y ago

Autoplaying videos is the new: 'midi-music blarring at you' from the 90s. Everytime this happens to me on mobile i can't decide to chuckle or cry. Without proper adjusted settings and addons no one can surf the web unharmed anymore. The web has become a hostile place. I mean silently playing videos in the background to gain profits from advertisers while costing you your data plan is burning real money. A kind of money transfer, but: unpretty.