How to prevent DOWNLOADING of video (not merely prevent autoplay) in Firefox
This may sound like word games, but I'm not trying to be funny, merely specific.
So I'm on a network with limited bandwidth. Therefore it's critical for me to understand what settings I can configure (if any) that will prevent the DOWNLOAD of video and/or large images from web sites.
For example, your basic site nowadays probably uses HTML5 and may use that vs. the old-style Flash plug-ins to embed video. And yep classic HTML links with references to image files for the images.
Back in the day you could configure a browser to ignore these references and then the browser would not even attempt to fetch the referenced image or video files. I've recently started using Firefox again, and I'm trying to learn how Firefox handles this in the HTML5 era (or rather what dumb users like me are supposed to do nowadays).
I'm noticing most of the help literature is regarding disabling settings of the auto-PLAY feature. However, due to my ignorance of modern Firefox, perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but most of it seems to involve disabling plug-ins that activate after the file is downloaded, not preventing the actual download. Similar to if I'm using Microsoft Word to view a DOCX file from a web site, uninstalling Word doesn't prevent the DOCX file from downloading. What I don't want to do is cheerfully disable the video playing while my browser still happily downloads the video in the background... because my main goal is not to avoid the annoyance of autoplay, but my goal is to conserve bandwidth on my connection.
FYI I'm using the latest version of Firefox Quantum on Manjaro Linux.
Thanks for advice anyone can provide in helping bring me into the "now" of modern Firefox, or who can point me to any further help articles or instructions to help educate me about this. If I'm over-reading and disabling auto-PLAY also inherently disables the downloading of the associated media, super, but that distinction is not obvious in any of the documentation I've seen so far.
Thanks!!
Isisombululo esikhethiwe
Hi, Seamonkey ( https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ ) is no longer a part of Mozilla but is still using Firefox Open Source Code
Using info from other browsers or what it can do what it has has nothing to do with Firefox nor as that is changing to another topic.
Since version 57 nothing seems to absolutely, 100% stop preload-downloading/buffering, nor stop auto-play. ublock Origin and some other privacy Extensions seem to do well when mixed together but you loose ability to fast change back and forth.
As for the Extensions Permissions, it would not be able to block what you want with out having that information.
Funda le mpendulo ngokuhambisana nalesi sihloko 👍 0All Replies (12)
Hello FireRabbit,
This add-on not only disables HTML5 autoplay, but also preloading : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-autoplay/
Another thing to try, is to toggle some browser.download preferences on the about:config page - see :
https://www.lifewire.com/modifying-download-settings-in-firefox-445716
The extension is a nice idea, but reviews for it indicate it is spotty as to how well it works, and that it sometimes triggers additional CPU resources and/or memory leaks in the browser? Also I'm curious about the safety of the permissions needed:
Permissions
This add-on can:
Access your data for all websites Access browser tabs
I was hoping to learn whether or not core Firefox sans extensions offered any ability to disable downloading. Is that possible? And yes, I'm aware I can experiment with the about:config preferences, that's closer to what I'm trying to ask.. is there a preference or combination of preferences that is already known by anyone to disable downloading of video without having to resort to letting a 3rd-party extension scan every web page I visit?
Thanks again.
Also, if it helps any to explain what I mean... in another Mozilla product, SeaMonkey... under Privacy & Security, there are options for "Image Acceptance Policy" (Do not load any images, Only load images that come from the originating server, Load all images) and for "Animated images should loop" (As many times as the image specifies, Once, Never). I'm wondering if there's any documentation in Firefox that allows for similar functionality, especially as it relates to various video sources.
Thanks again for looking at this and for any ideas!
Isisombululo Esikhethiwe
Hi, Seamonkey ( https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ ) is no longer a part of Mozilla but is still using Firefox Open Source Code
Using info from other browsers or what it can do what it has has nothing to do with Firefox nor as that is changing to another topic.
Since version 57 nothing seems to absolutely, 100% stop preload-downloading/buffering, nor stop auto-play. ublock Origin and some other privacy Extensions seem to do well when mixed together but you loose ability to fast change back and forth.
As for the Extensions Permissions, it would not be able to block what you want with out having that information.
Would you do this please :
Type in the address bar about:config (press Enter) (promise to be careful, if asked)
Type in the search bar and look for the preference :
permissions.default.image
And change its value to 2
Then close and restart Firefox, in order for the change to take effect.
Also see :
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/64881/how-to-disable-images-in-firefox/
Maybe you'd like to take a look at these extensions :
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/policy-control/
and :
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bandwidth-hero/
and :
More info / update to my question. If I'm looking for an extension, one that was very reliable years ago (pre-HTML5) for images was NoScript and it seems to still have a wide user base, and seems to work for blocking video content, as evidenced by the lack of video boxes after installing NoScript, and much-improved page-load times over my slow connection. But if I disable NoScript and tinker with the config settings, ones I've found so far seem to still allow the download of videos to the page, just the player control on the page is not active until I click it, additionally in these cases the player controls still say "loading" or give a progress indicator as the video downloads, just doesn't play automatically, and if I choose to click to play the video, the video starts immediately as it seems to have already been downloaded awaiting play. (ex: media.autoplay.enabled=false)
Again I'm a former Firefox user from pre-HTML5 who is just getting up to speed on the latest version. And I've read some of the discussion on bugzilla and other sites with dev discussions from a few years ago on whether or not to disable autoplay of video due to the possibility of breaking custom controls which need scripting to run. Just not sure what the outcome of those discussions has been. So it wouldn't surprise me if some of the video-blocking tech has been incorporated into a core Firefox config setting or some other preference, or if that functionality has been punted to extension authors such as NoScript, and if so, I'm curious if NoScript is still king of the hill for blocking or if something else better and more widespread has came along.
And yep, I'm aware that NoScript requires even more permissions than the extension recommended in the first reply, but it is much more widespread/accepted/verified, and I tend to already trust the development of it as a known good from back in the pre-HTML5 days.
Again thanks for anyone who can provide additional suggestions.
Oh and apologies, just saw two more replies above, I'm checking out those suggestions now and will reply back when I have tested. Thanks!!!
Thanks McCoy and Pkshadow for the info and advice. I marked Pkshadow's reply as the solution because it seems to fit my case the best... even if the answer is that there is NO good solution that works 100%, just knowing that resolves my issue by stopping me looking further for the impossible.
So far, I've found NoScript still is kinda the nuclear option that knocks everything dead and still has more than a million users listed, though not sure how many of those are recent, if I have to give an extension a lot of permissions to scrape my web pages, I'd rather it be one trusted by a million rather than a few thousand. Just a personal preference... though I will definitely look more at the other ones you've recommended.
Thanks again!!
FireRabbit said
in another Mozilla product, SeaMonkey...
Pkshadow said
Hi, Seamonkey ( https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ ) is no longer a part of Mozilla but is still using Firefox Open Source Code
The suite under SeaMonkey name was never a Mozilla product. It is a community effort in continuing the former Mozilla Application Suite that Mozilla discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey
The browser part is not based on Firefox but it does share code from Firefox and email components from Thunderbird. The Thunderbird email client itself despite Mozilla in name has not been a Mozilla product for a while now.
@ FireRabbit :
You said you wanted to limit the loading of images : did you try the "about:config" suggestion ?
As for the permissions you're asked to give when installing an extension - would you please take a look at this :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/permission-request-messages-firefox-extensions
And also :
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/02/01/understanding-extension-permission-requests/
@McCoy, yes thanks I did try that and got positive results as well. Good info too on the permissions, thanks!
@james, @Pkshadow... Yes, I technically erred in calling SeaMonkey a Mozilla product... I've used multiple iterations of that line of browser software with yes even Mosaic, Netscape, Mozilla and on to SeaMonkey and other software like Thunderbird, Lightning and Sunbird... different teams may have taken ownership of different pieces over the years but I view them as having a common legacy which I incorrectly referred to as Mozilla, probably just as a lazy reflex to distinguish them from other lines of development such as browsers from Microsoft and Google... (who directly or indirectly have stood on the shoulders of the original browser-building teams. Even in cases where code is not directly derived, features that started in one browser family inevitably push other browser families to consider adoption or alternate methods.) So agreed Mozilla was not the correct term... is there a better preferred term to describe the overall line of "lineage" since describing it by any one point in the line is inappropriate? Thanks again
@FireRabbit: I've this requirement at the moment, this is not difficult.
There are a bunch of media.FORMAT.enabled settings in about:config. Disable all of those and the video won't be able to load. You'll get a message in the player saying that. Also zeroed settings related to cache sizes for good measure too.
My settings:
All false: media.ffmpeg.enabled media.ffvpx.enabled media.flac.enabled media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled media.gmp-widevinecdm.enabled media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled media.mediasource.enabled media.mediasource.mp4.enabled media.mediasource.webm.enabled media.mp4.enabled media.navigator.enabled media.ogg.enabled media.opus.enabled media.wave.enabled media.webm.enabled
All 0 (zero): media.cache_size media.memory_cache_max_size media.memory_caches_combined_limit_kb
Am sure this is overkill and some subset of these would suffice -- but don't want to use up my bandwidth experimenting!