Firefox stopped autoplaying audio in the background
I listen to a lot of music over the internet. When listening to sites and have "tracks" and need to skip to the next one, firefox always used to move on to the next track. Sometime recently, within the last few weeks, it stopped functioning like this. It will only work as is used to when the tab playing audio is opened in the foreground. If I've switched to another tab, it will continue playing the song it was on, but will not skip to the next song when it's time. I've tried changing some playback settings in about:config, to no avail. Any help?
All Replies (13)
Could the problem be the anti-autoplay setting? This article describes where to find that: Allow or block media autoplay in Firefox.
thanks, but I tried that already. Its set to the proper settings to allow autoplay.
There are methods pages can use to detect that they are not the page in focus, so it's possible this is a change in the page. Any difference in other browsers?
I tried Chrome, and it functions as Firefox used to. Skips to the next song when ready. Would it be too much to ask for you to check a website I'm trying?
You can share links to sites that do not require an account. Happens all the time here.
Thanks. No account required.
http://www.gratefuldeadoftheday.com/05-15-1970
So normally, say I have two tabs open, that one I just linked, and facebook. I start the music, and switch over to facebook to browse, when the song in the other tab ends, it switches to the next song. It recently stopped behaving this way, not when one song ends I need to switch over to the tab playing music for it to start again.
Hmm, it's strange. The moment I click that tab it starts playing. Why is it waiting?
I think the site has all the needed permissions, and if I pop the player frame out and give it permission, same problem.
So far, the only way I see to make it work it to move the tab to a new window (you can click and drag down on the tab and it will detach). As the active tab in the new window, as long as the window is on screen and not minimized, it plays through at least a couple tracks.
Thinking maybe the problem was the media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground preference, I flipped it to false, but it didn't help get the autoplay working in this case (not sure if it works immediately or a restart is needed). So I'm not sure why it pauses in background tabs.
That's what got me too. I tried toggling all the recommended settings. I think it's a bug. It just started happeing within the last update or two. That's not the only site it does it on.
archive.org is the same way.
Also, I have a personal server, it reacts the same way in firefox when streaming my music app.
jscher2000 said
So far, the only way I see to make it work it to move the tab to a new window (you can click and drag down on the tab and it will detach). As the active tab in the new window, as long as the window is on screen and not minimized, it plays through at least a couple tracks.
This is a great workaround. Don't know why I didn't think of it. Thank you.
An extremely patient person with a high bandwidth connection and a test page that plays very short clips could run Mozregression to try to track down the relevant change. But considering the workaround, I'm not sure it's worth it unless you are operating a public site that needs to autoplay.
In this case the website plays a mp3 audio file via a video tag. I don't know whether it would make a difference with an audio tag, but this sounds more like a problem with the JWPlayer that wants focus for some reason.
cor-el said
In this case the website plays a mp3 audio file via a video tag. I don't know whether it would make a difference with an audio tag, but this sounds more like a problem with the JWPlayer that wants focus for some reason.
I'm sorry, what is the JWPlayer?
JWPlayer is a popular video script used for the Archive.org player.