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Ask HN: How do I reliably prevent autoplay in Firefox 91?
I would like no video or audio to play unless I click on it. After this morning's upgrade to version 91, I am back to videos on Twitter (and possibly elsewhere) starting to auto-play just by scrolling into view. In my preferences, I have "Block Audio and Video" for all sites with no exceptions. In my Twitter profile, I have "Autoplay" set to "Never", but, I also look at threads without logging in.
Do you know what I need to do to be able to look at a Twitter thread while not logged in without triggering autoplay? Unfortunately, I do not remember what I had done previously which made it so that I almost never encountered autoplaying media on any site.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoAutoplay is toxic. I think all webpages should be completely static by default. By law.
- slackfan 5y agoHey, just use a browser that supports (x)html 4.1 and you're golden, no laws needed!
- FridayoLeary 5y agoChrome doesn't, apparently.
- cronix 5y agoIt sure would be interesting to see how much green house gasses and similar are emitted as a direct result of autoplay. It takes computing power and bandwidth and electricity. Much more than text and images. Autoplay is anti-environment, if you really think about it. If you added up all of the electricity consumed from start to end for autoplay for all people who encounter it, and compare it to bitcoin mining, what do you think consumes more electricity globally? I don't factually know, but I have a guess.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoDon't get me started on flashing ads. They give me headaches. I wonder if they can induce an epileptic fit, i understand fast, flashing lights can do that.
- eth0up 5y agoWhy ever the fuck anyone would want autoplay, especially of unsolicited random content, must simply be... They actually don't! Which begs the inquiry of why it is so ruthlessly, relentlessly foisted on us. The answers are, to me, obvious, but apparently not to be uttered above one's breath. I'll do it anyway: Browser (noun) - advertisement/surveillance platforms, some of which can be modified (by some) to exhibit secondary browsing capabilities.
- zwegner 5y agoThe solution I use is to set media.autoplay.blocking_policy to 2 in about:config (I found this on the Mozilla wiki [1]). This setting requires a click to play media. Incidentally, I browse Twitter while logged in, but the autoplay settings are "per-browser", and Firefox's anti-fingerprinting mode makes Twitter think you're using a new browser on each visit, and thus keeps autoplaying all the time without the above setting. Pretty irritating. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/block-autoplay https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/block-autoplay
- gruez 5y ago> The solution I use is to set media.autoplay.blocking_policy to 2 in about:config (I found this on the Mozilla wiki [1]). This setting requires a click to play media. Not really. The mozilla wiki says: >The technical detail for this policy is that the play invocation should be triggered inside an user input event handler. If the autoplay is what OP described (ie. "starting to auto-play just by scrolling into view"), then that would satisfy the condition because it's within an user input event handler (the scroll).
- zwegner 5y agoRight, and as the wiki mentions, it's not a great solution overall. But at least it works for me for Twitter (and Twitter is still trying to autoplay on scroll, the play button on videos disappear while scrolling only to reappear). Not sure why it works actually, but it's better than going in the Twitter settings all the time or dealing with autoplay.
- opheliate 5y agoFrom the wiki: > For example, when a user clicks the element X, then we only allow a website to start the element X from a function that is in the call stack based on the X's “click” event handler. I could be misinterpreting this, but doesn't that imply that scrolling into view would generally not be sufficient to allow autoplay? Since the scroll event would be on the body/window, and the video itself is not the target of the event?
- 5y ago
- alpaca128 5y agoIt's frustrating how sites just ignore or circumvent this setting. Some sites just pretend this option doesn't exist and their video player breaks. This setting helps a little but never worked 100% for me. On YouTube I always open a video in a new tab. For some reason that prevents autoplay. It would be pretty nice to have a setting that not only reliably blocks autoplay of videos but also animated gifs. Most of the time they're just distracting.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y agoI missed using FlashBlock (Firebird extension) back when Shockwave/Flash is popular. FlashBlock did what it said and block all Flash video in the page until I click the element to load that Flash object and it will play the video. Back then, there is no escaping with this extension, it is relentless and very good at it. Now, browsers bastardized the version of FlashBlock and implemented this shitty approach with HTML5 autoplay which sometime work but never did in the same level as FlashBlock. We need HTML5Block extension (there are one extension but it is no longer maintained) that can do the same level as FlashBlock.
- Causality1 5y agoIn my preferences, I have "Block Audio and Video" for all sites with no exceptions If the browser can't control whether the video player plays or pauses then that option should prevent the browser from loading the player module at all until the user clicks on it. Unfortunately broken player windows would make things look slightly less polished, and if there's anything consistent about Firefox it's their willingness to look good even if it means bending over their power users.
- dublinben 5y agoYou might be interested in the alternative Twitter front-end Nitter[0] which does not autoplay videos. There's even extensions for Firefox etc. and you could run your own instance if you so chose. [0]https://github.com/zedeus/nitter https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
- nanis 5y agoThank you. Good idea. I will look into it.
- tech234a 5y agoOn Chromium-based browsers I use an extension called AutoplayStopper [1] which works well for me. It allows you to add exceptions for certain sites too which is helpful. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ejddcgojdblidajhngkogefpkknnebdh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ej...
- gumby 5y agoThis is why I miss Flash: by not installing it I didn’t have to deal with blasting audio, video, or sites that required a stupid journey or game in order to simply use them.
- musicale 5y agoWhy is it that no popular browser seems to have a simple, built-in "block autoplay" setting that actually works? Firefox - no Safari - no Chrome - no
- timbit42 5y agoI'm using the Video Autoplay Blocker for Firefox. It stops videos from playing until you click their "Watch Video" button on the top left corner of the video.