Block autoplay videos in Microsoft Edge
The basics of how to block autoplaying video are already baked into Edge, reveals MARK HACHMAN
While Google messes around with your ability to mute and block autoplaying video within the Chrome browser, Microsoft has taken action. Global controls for preventing video from autoplaying within Microsoft Edge are being rolled out.
So far, Edge’s new powers are limited to the beta version of the browser that ships with the Windows
Insider builds of Windows 10, scheduled for the autumn of 2018. You’ll be able to set global controls as well as per-site exceptions. But by the time autumn arrives, everyone should be able to control which sites autoplay video within Edge.
How autoplay controls work within Edge
Right now, global controls for autoplaying videos allow you to choose among three choices: block, limit, and allow. Microsoft says it may tweak or add other options in the future, so it’s possible these choices will change.
For now, you’ll need to access the Settings menu, which in Edge is concealed behind the ellipsis (three dots) menu in the upper right-hand corner of the browser. Clicking it exposes the sidebar menu, where you’ll have access to Favorites, the Reading List, and more. Scroll all the way down to the Settings heading at the end. That, in turn, will open the Settings menu, now subdivided into a number of categories of options. The default is the General settings, where you can configure the Edge theme and other options. What we want to access is in the Advanced menu.
Here, you’ll find what you’re looking for: the global media autoplay controls. You can select one of the options from the drop-down menu we mentioned previously: allow, limit, or block. The Allow and Block options are self-explanatory – keep in mind that block tries to block all video. The Limit option falls into a middle ground, which we’ll explain below. Note that whatever permission level you choose will become the default behaviour for autoplaying video, unless you choose a specific permission on a per-site basis.
One of the best tests of any browser or ad-blocker is the San Francisco Chronicle’s website – SFGate. com. Here, your browser is deluged by ads and pop-up videos. Even turning on the global ‘block’ command, the site manages to load and display still images where you’d expect to see video: in large players centred on the page, as well as pop-up windows that float into the corners of the screen. But the site doesn’t play the video, so in this case, Edge does its job.
(Don’t worry, though. Using the Block setting, Edge just blocks videos from autoplaying. You can still manually click a YouTube video, for example, and it will play normally.)
What if you select Limit? It’s hard to predict the behaviour for all sites, but for SFGate.com, the large centralized videos don’t play, but the smaller windows do. SFGate appears to mute its videos by default, though that behaviour may differ from site to site.
Site-by-site controls are being worked on
Edge also has per-site controls, though they’re a bit finicky and perhaps not all that intuitive.
If you hover your cursor over the padlock icon within Edge’s URL bar, you’ll see a pop-up: ‘Show site information’. Left-clicking it reveals the website permissions. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to do here but click the Media autoplay settings link at the bottom.
That unveils what looks to be a per-site autoplay control. Unfortunately, the media autoplay controls