Problems Solved
Can I stop autoplay web videos?
Q I’m an 84-year-old subscriber of many years, who has been locked down in an area where newspaper deliveries are not available. So, I read news on the internet. I’m thoroughly fed up with news sites that have videos that play automatically, sometimes jumping out before moving to another place. Why does this happen? And is there a way to stop it? John Whittaker
A We agree that auto playing videos are deeply annoying. The reasons behind their existence are multiple. Developers of some websites no doubt believe they’re being helpful, saving you a click on the play button. But for many others, the motive is financial: an auto playing video can be notched up as a ‘view’, for which advertisers will be charged a tiny amount. With countless such forced ‘views’, all those tiny amounts add up.
So, that’s the ‘why’ – but stopping autoplay videos is trickier. Some services, such as Facebook, offer a simple, site-wide Off switch: click the menu button at the top right (a down arrow), then click Settings followed by Videos, and then open the Auto-play Videos dropdown menu and choose Off. Youtube puts an AUTOPLAY On/off switch at top right of its ‘Up next’ list.
However, that’s just two sites, and two different methods. Every site will have its own layout and options. Moreover, for their own reasons – usually related to the noted financial incentives – many websites will bury such options deeply, or even employ tricks to actively prevent attempts to block auto playing content.
Complicating matters is the fact that what works in one web browser might not in another. In short, it’s all a frightful mess.
But there are ways to limit the frustration. Chrome once had an option to stop auto playing videos but for reasons best known to Google, that feature was removed. There are various free ‘blocker’ extensions, such as Auto play stopper ( www.snipca.com/35018), but none is 100-per-cent effective.
However, this is another situation where the revamped Edge could usurp Chrome. Microsoft’s browser retains the autoplay-blocking feature dropped from Chrome, but it’s currently considered an experimental feature – so you must first enable it. To do that, click in the address bar at the top and type edge://flags and then press Enter. Next, in the ‘Search flags’ box, type autoplay and press Enter. Now click the Default button and, from the dropdown menu, choose Enabled.
Now, open Edge’s main menu – three dots, top right – and choose Settings. Next, on the left, click ‘Site permissions’ and then, on the right, scroll down to find and then click ‘Media autoplay’ (see screenshot above). Finally, next to ‘Control if audio and video play automatically on sites’, click to open the dropdown menu and then choose Block (see screenshot left).
You’ll need to restart Edge for the change to come into effect. Again, don’t expect a perfect result, but you should find that your autoplay annoyances are now much reduced.