When you're at work or in class, there's nothing more annoying than sites that automatically play media. One minute you're happily distracting yourself, and the next, you're scrambling to hit pause while everyone stares at you. Not to mention now your boss knows you're slacking off.
The good news is that there's a way to turn off autoplay and avoid blowing your cover ever again. Here's how to do it in all four major browsers.
Firefox
In Firefox, you can enable a feature called Click To Play that replaces Flash content with a static image that you have to click on before the media will load.
To enable it, type about:config into your URL bar, which should bring up a warning. After dismissing it, type plugins.click_to_play into the search bar, then right-click on it and select Toggle. After restarting Firefox, you should see the image above in place of videos.
Chrome
To do the same thing in Chrome, type chrome://chrome/settings/content into your address bar and find the Plug-ins section.
Now, all you have to do is select Click to play. You can also set permissions for specific plug-ins by clicking Manage exceptions.
Safari
In Safari, you can download a few extensions to disable autoplay. ClickToPlugin disables all plug-ins from launching content without your permission, and it can replace a lot of media players with HTML5. If you only care about Flash content, you'll want ClickToFlash instead.
Internet Explorer
According to Microsoft's support page, you can use ActiveX filtering to prevent autoplay in IE. Just go to the Tools menu and select Safety, then enable ActiveX Filtering. Now, when you visit a site with ActiveX content, you'll see a little blue icon in your address bar to let you know it's being blocked.
To play the blocked media, click on the icon. A menu will pop up, where you can turn off the filter for that site. Once you're done watching, you can turn it back on by clicking the icon again.
Do you have an autoplay horror story? Share it with us in the comments!
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27 Comments
How to stop the videos from auto loading but keep them buffering until i click play?
Thats what I want to know also, they are just using data for nothing
YES YES YES YES FINALLY THANKS YES!
this stupid auto play ran my internet bill 90 dollars over cause of using to much of my limit and it ran me way over what my limit and this is about to happen again for this month it is not fair that this stuff automatically update it on my computer...im mad as you know what for what it is doing
Just found this site looking for a way to turn off the damn "Auto-play" on FB, BTW hate FB but its the only way to keep up to date with my Kids & Grandkids..... Even the email I use has "Auto-play" crap, I just dumped TWC (Cable) and went to a Satellite. Not only does it eat my time, I hate listening them, have to leave my speakers off.... I love my satellite connection, its so much better than cable the connection in my area, how ever I didn't realize how many sites have the damn auto-play ads playing, it's a great way for companies to advertize, but its so annoying as I said I turned off my speakers back when this all first started, also I had unlimited internet... So until I now I had no idea just how much all these annoying BS ads are eating up my internet time!!! Love your site !!! Thanks so much for posting this !!!
Blessed Be...
~Wolf~
I tries this but videos still autoplay on facebook, so it didn't work.
Yeah it's freaking hell trying to get it to work in the turd-crap which is Chrome.
And if one install things like FlashController or whatever it's called then you may have to click multiple times and then maybe it doesn't work as intended in the end anyway.
How hard can it be? Who the fuck want to play 10 YouTube videos at the same time anyway? Why is the default so freaking retarded? Why load and play by default?
Also I don't want any freaking stupid caching before I've started playing either. That's what a decent Internet connection is for thank you.
This stupid page just ignored my comment and loaded another page with some short stupid AJAX error. Freaking idiots. As l and r as the developers of Chrome.
That's stars for censorship not bold damnit.
Freaking idiots developing things.
Thank you! This has been making me crazy! Now they are no more!
Thank you. Works on Chromium as well.
This no longer works on Chrome (at least with CNN.com). Anyone who knows how to stop the autoplay feature on CNN.com, PLEASE chime in!
I was so relieved to find this easy how-to, I shared it on my own blog - Hope you don't mind! http://www.uk-va.com/autoplay-media/
Internet Explorer Active-X solution does not work. Sure the blue circle shows up on the URL bar showing filtering is on. But it does not show up until after the video has started.
Chrome fix works well. Any thoughts on IE?
for ie11:
tools then click active x filtering.
that's all you have to do.
Is there another solution ? Because it works like a charm, but looks like the plugin is broken... There are players like YouTube, that have an auutoplay mode, but also a state where they display the Play button, is there a plugin that forces the clic-to-play state for every media player ?
IE11 ActiveX Filtering does not work. Adobe Flash Player starts automatically and there is no way to stop it.
Does not work on chrome. Yahoo pages still play obnoxious videos.
doesn't work on chrome. i even set it to block by default and they're still playing! WHAT BOLLOCKS!
Didn't work with Firefox on Fox news' videos, and I tried toggling both ways. Didn't work for IE 11 either. Seems there's a better option: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/3497991/how-stop-autoplaying-ads-videos-media-on-web-pages/
This fix works for me in Chrome - MOSTLY!
Ironically, this page has a video that it will not stop.
I wonder what the code is to get around it?
Changing my settings in ABP (Add Block Plus) does stop the advert though I would like to find the code that allows video's to bypass the setting...
No doubt this is good way to customize autoplay settings in Windows. But Talk about enabling or disable AutoPlay options in Windows. HowToWords explained well in detail and new options
http://www.howtowords.com/2015/06/how-to-enable-autoplay-disable-autoplay-in-windows/
All very nice, good to turn OFF AUTO PLAY, but how do I stop videos from AUTO LOADING ?
Videos I don't want to watch are pre loading for me and using up my internet data which I have very little.
Does anyone know how to stop videos from auto loading on Facebook ?
You can change that setting directly in Facebook. Check out this guide to see how.
Hi, It works yes. And usually no plugs in play unless I want them to. However there are certain sites that autoplay despite this, and it drives me mad (one example is Appartment therapy). When I enter the site, I hear video's, and have to scroll down to find out where its coming from. Usually one, often two or even more are playing! I have to click to turn them off. REALLY annoying.
I told Appartment therapy but never had a reply.
Is there a way to stop this kind of autoplay video from starting in the first place? All my plug ins are set to OFF, and I individually allow each one as I encounter them. So what else can I do? Anything?
Thanks if anyone has any ideas... By the way I use Chrome on win 7.
An ad blocker might be the only option for those small video ads, if that's what they are.
Listening to my music playlist in Winamp, and Auto-Play kicks in, causing the song to buffer & flutter like a bad cassette tape...I can't stand it!!! I finally rebuilt my playlist after doing without my tunes for months (I have a lot of music!!)...Why are the gods conspiring to keep me from listening to my music??
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