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How do I stop YouTube videos automatically starting to play when opening them in new tabs

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Whenever I right-click a YouTube video on the home page and select 'open link in new tab' followed by launching the tab in focus, the YouTube video on the corresponding tab automatically starts playing. How do I get the YouTube video on new tabs to stop automatically playing as soon as I enter the tab?

Troubleshooting steps attempted:

Disabling all add-ons. Selected block audio and video 'for the autoplay setting under Privacy & Securty. Set media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed via about:config to true

The strange part is that if I open Firefox in a clean, new profile, navigate to the YouTube website, and then right-click a YouTube video to 'open link in new tab' and then open the tab itself, the video DOES NOT automatically start playing. How do I get that same functionality on my default, main profile?

EDIT - Solved! For anybody who wants to disable autoplay follow this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn7_PiwhG4M

Whenever I right-click a YouTube video on the home page and select 'open link in new tab' followed by launching the tab in focus, the YouTube video on the corresponding tab automatically starts playing. How do I get the YouTube video on new tabs to stop automatically playing as soon as I enter the tab? Troubleshooting steps attempted: Disabling all add-ons. Selected''' block audio and video''' 'for the '''autoplay''' setting under '''Privacy & Securty. ''' Set ''media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed'' via about:config to'' true'' The strange part is that if I open Firefox in a clean, new profile, navigate to the YouTube website, and then right-click a YouTube video to 'open link in new tab' and then open the tab itself, the video DOES NOT automatically start playing. How do I get that same functionality on my default, main profile? EDIT - Solved! For anybody who wants to disable autoplay follow this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn7_PiwhG4M

Modified by TheThingKing

All Replies (1)

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Alternatively, you can set media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2

You can look at these prefs on the about:config page to see what settings work for you to block autoplay.

  • media.autoplay.default = 5 [0:allow;1:blockAudible;5:blockAll]
  • media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2
  • media.autoplay.allow-extension-background-pages = false
  • media.autoplay.block-event.enabled = true
  • media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground (as preferred)

media.autoplay