How to Block Autoplay Videos With Firefox
Nobody likes autoplay videos. An accidental sound attack that you may or may not have seen is rarely a pleasant surprise. Firefox got an update this week that added a robust new audio blocking tool when autoplaying videos from any site, making web browsing a lot more comfortable.
To enable this, update Firefox to the latest version (66.0) and click the information icon — the lowercase “i” in the circle in the browser bar. Click on “Permissions” and then you will be taken to the menu and check the box next to “Block websites from playing audio automatically.”
As the name of the setting suggests, the tool is specifically geared towards blocking videos with auto-play audio. Sites that run videos without audio, such as Facebook, will still work with this feature. Likewise, sites like YouTube and Netflix that play many videos in sequence after one click will still be able to work without restriction.
As noted by The Verge , Firefox is not the first browser to integrate such services. For a while, there was an autoplay video blocker in Chrome settings. However, the Chrome version blocks the automatic playback of videos with sound on many sites, but leaves a number of popular ones in the whitelist.
There is a way to block some autoplay videos in Chrome, but to do this, you need to go to the browser’s semi-secret Flags menu for experimental features. Enter “chrome: // flags /” in the address bar, search for “Autorun Policy” and switch the setting to “Requires document user activation”. If that doesn’t work for the sites you visit, grab an extension that’s a little stricter on autoplay.