How to Prevent Autoplaying Videos All Over the Internet
Generally speaking, autoplaying videos is annoying. On social media, they can pull you in, and the next thing you know, you’ll spend an hour watching videos. On websites, they get in the way by following you around the page and hiding the article text.
Fortunately, there are ways to turn off autoplay videos everywhere. Social media apps offer methods to turn them off, and you’ll also find options built into many popular browsers (and if not, there’s always an extension to help you).
How to turn off autoplay videos on social media
If you spend hours browsing Facebook, Twitter and Instagram every day, you can probably get back the wasted time by turning off autoplay videos.
Disable Facebook video autoplay
Open the Facebook app on your iPhone or Android smartphone and tap the Menu tab (on iOS, it’s in the lower right corner; on Android, it’s in the upper right corner). Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings and under Media & Controls select Videos & Photos .
Here, select the Never autoplay video option to block all autoplay videos.
You can also turn them off on the Facebook website itself. Click the drop-down list in the upper-right corner and choose Settings & Privacy > Preferences . Go to the Video section in the sidebar and under Auto Video Play , select the Off option . “.
Disable autoplay of videos on Twitter
Twitter also offers various options to turn off autoplay videos on the website and mobile apps. On your iPhone or Android smartphone, press the three-line menu button to open the sidebar and navigate to the Settings & Privacy option. Then go to Data Usage > Autoplay Video and select the Never option.
On the website, click the More button with three dots in the sidebar and select Settings & Privacy . Here, select Accessibility, Display & Languages > Data Usage > AutoPlay and set it to Never .
Disable autoplay for Instagram videos
Instagram really wants to grab your attention and there is no way to directly disable autoplay of videos in the app. Your best bet is to use a website where Instagram doesn’t automatically play videos by default.
However, in mobile apps, you can effectively disable autoplay videos by enabling low data mode. Go to your profile and click the three-line menu button in the upper right corner. Go to Settings > Account > Cellular Data Usage . If you’re using an iPhone, turn on Use Less Data . If you are using an Android smartphone, turn on Traffic Saver and then select the High Definition Media option.
How to turn off autoplay video in the desktop browser
Want to stop autoplaying videos on all websites you visit? You can try browser level features that disable autoplay media. But when it comes to efficiency, your mileage can vary depending on the browser you choose (Chrome doesn’t offer that feature, for example), which means you might have to resort to using an extension (more on that in a minute).
Disable Autoplay Video in Microsoft Edge
In Microsoft Edge, click the three-dot Menu button on the toolbar and select Settings . On the left sidebar, go to Cookies and Site Permissions and under Autoplay Media , switch to the Restrict option.
Unfortunately, this is not a kill switch for all videos, but the browser will restrict autoplaying videos in the future based on your past autoplay media interactions on this site.
Disable autoplay video in Firefox
Firefox has a really nice feature that allows you to block autoplay of videos on all websites (and you can whitelist some sites like Lifehacker if you want).
Click the three- line menu button on the toolbar and go to Settings . In the “Privacy and Security”, click “Settings” button next to the option “Auto”. In the pop-up window, click the drop-down next to Default for all websites and switch to Block audio and video .
Disable autoplay videos in Safari
Safari is really good at blocking autoplay videos (and privacy features in general). In fact, it blocks autoplaying videos by default, so you don’t need to do anything at all.
If for some reason this feature is disabled for you, re-enable it by going to Safari > Preferences in the menu bar. Go to the Websites tab and select Autoplay from the sidebar. In the lower-right drop-down list, select the Never Auto-Play option.
How to turn off autoplay videos using a browser extension
The built-in autorun blockers don’t always work, and if you’re using Chrome, you don’t even have that option. At times like this, you can try a third party extension like AutoplayStopper . It works in both Chrome and Edge, and it blocks auto-playing videos on all websites (including news).