how to stop video and audio from auto play
Followed instructions. Prefs. Privacy/Security. AutoPlay. Settings. But the screen does not look like the instructions and does not have check boxes. has box to enter url for exceptions but does not do anything. I don't want exceptions, I would like default to be autoplay off for all sites.
How do I do this. Thank you.
Firefox 99.0.1 Mac OS 10.15.7 MacBook Pro
All Replies (6)
Well, on my system when I click Settings next to Autoplay, I get the following dialog: https://i.imgur.com/PBTjbZI.png
It has a drop-down menu item at the top with Block Audio and Video as a selection. There are no check boxes. I'm using Firefox 100.0.2 in Windows 10 Pro.
Try these preferences in about:config.
WARNING: Changing preferences through this interface not officially supported Hidden settings edited using the about:config tool are explicitly not supported, which means that Mozilla makes no guarantees they will be supported in the future, or that Mozilla will fix them if they break. Mozilla does not test these preferences, and will not in the future. That includes security and performance testing which these preferences may affect.
[Warning added by moderator]
media.autoplay.default = 5 [0:allow;1:blockAudible;2:Prompt;5:blockAll]
media.autoplay.block-event.enabled = true
media.autoplay.allow-extension-background-pages = false
media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1364459
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox
Modified by Chris Ilias
results for this are mixed and support does not recommend editing the about:config tool. I don't know enough to do this. Wish there was just a simple way to turn off auto play.
Can you provide an example site?
You should be able to control media.autoplay.default via the autoplay icon Firefox shows on the location bar (Block Audio:1; Block Audio and Video:5, Allow Audio and Video:0).
state.multichoice.autoplayblock = Block Audio state.multichoice.autoplayblockall = Block Audio and Video state.multichoice.autoplayallow = Allow Audio and Video
The policy pref may not block all media with its default setting (0) and in that case you need to change this pref via the about:config page from 0 to 2 to have more user control.
- about:config => media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2
media.autoplay.blocking_policy:
0:use sticky activation (default) 1:use transient activation (the transient activation duration can be adjusted by the pref `dom.user_activation.transient.timeout`)
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#sticky-activation 2:user input depth (allow autoplay when the play is trigged by user input which is determined by the user input depth)
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#transient-activation
The Firefox devs do not expose the controlling of all features possible in the user interface, only settings they consider important and that are used widely are exposed via the UI to avoid cluttering the UI. This leaves less important settings to be controlled only directly via about:config. In a lot of cases you can make this change safely via about:config like in this case where you extend settings that aren't included in the UI where the default may not block all cases of autoplay.
- 1509933 - Use transient user activation as the default way to detect if the action is an user-input for `click-to-play` [78]
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. If you get the warning page, you can click the "Accept the Risk and Continue" button.
Modified by cor-el
In other words, there isn't a user friendly way to merely turn off auto play. Only the auto play, because, of course sometimes I actually want to see and hear audio and video. It is only the pervasive and intrusive video that plays automatically and then opens in a separate window when you scroll by. Thank you for your replies.