from Hacker News

Chrome does not have any way to stop video auto play?

by nomendos on 2/13/25, 6:46 AM with 62 comments

What is going on with Chrome, It seems Chrome does not have any way to stop video auto play (no settings option and all extensions that used to work now are delisted from Chrome store). I tried many from the Chrome store and few that are not yet removed, simply do not work anymore. Has Google Chrome team fallen so low that they insist on autoplaying and giving no option to stop it!?!?

  • by gavinsyancey on 2/13/25, 7:23 AM

    Firefox blocks auto playing videos with sound by default. And you can also configure it to block all autoplay or or allow it globally, or per-website. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-autoplay

  • by 28304283409234 on 2/13/25, 7:02 AM

    Chrome is not there to serve you. It is to serve Google.

  • by liendolucas on 2/13/25, 8:50 AM

    There's no reason to use Chrome today. Maybe there was a reason to use it many many years ago. With plenty of options today the sane choice is to select another browser. I run Firefox even on my phone. If for some reason I need a Chrome based browser, on my phone I switch to Brave, on the desktop to Chromium. But I rarely open any of those at all as Firefox has been doing extremely well.

  • by doctor_radium on 2/13/25, 7:12 AM

    Hmm, but there are ways of streaming video that don't have traditional Play/Pause/etc. buttons. If there's no way to turn it off, how can Chrome "learn my preferences"? Maybe it can sense me swearing? Not a Chrome user and definitely not starting now. Autoplay video is one of my great annoyances on the modern web.

  • by tech234a on 2/13/25, 7:29 AM

    AutoplayerStopper [1] is still available if you set the policy to enable manifest V2 extensions [2] which should still work for a few more months.

    [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/autoplaystopper/ejd...

    [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1d49ud1/manif...

  • by seneca on 2/13/25, 7:11 AM

    This is totally unsurprising. I'm sure Google realized that autoplaying gives them more ad revenue somehow. It was a massive mistake to allow an ad company control over your browser.

  • by follower on 2/14/25, 8:08 AM

    Quoting part of k1t's comment[0] for visibility:

    "I do recall a Firefox discussion about how they can't 100% block videos because there will always be another way - eg do animated gifs count, or javascript that shows a rapid sequence of images [...]"

    I also recall this being a justification given for auto-playing muted or audio-less video (i.e. because blocking "efficient" muted video playback will just lead to malicious actors using "less efficient" means of "image sequence" playback thus increasing the negative impact further).

    On a related note, the other day I also discovered (while debugging why an audio demo didn't work the same way it did six years ago :D ) that there's now also a concept called "Sticky Activation" which can also impact "Autoplay of Media and Web Audio APIs (in particular for AudioContexts)"[1].

    ----

    [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43033814

    [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/User_a...

  • by timothya on 2/13/25, 7:00 AM

    See: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay

    tl;dr: The browser attempts to learn your preference for each site automatically based on how you interact with videos. You can see what it's calculated by visiting chrome://media-engagement

  • by nomendos on 2/13/25, 7:28 AM

    OK Chrome shall be gone/uninstalled/not-used from all my computers and shall recommend it be removed from all my friends computers with the explanation of their behavior and loss of trust and respect for us users!

  • by bdhcuidbebe on 2/13/25, 8:01 PM

    If its youtube, change your settings, Its autoplay on default.

    If its your website, just set it up like you want in the video tag.

    Not sure why this post wasnt removed tho. This is just general issues you could have googled for a solution or askes a site dedicated to it such as stack overflow.

  • by tim333 on 2/13/25, 7:26 PM

  • by blackeyeblitzar on 2/13/25, 7:01 AM

    I find this behavior quite annoying. I would like to be able to block auto play by default across the entire Internet. I have to imagine this is simply a way to allow Google’s ad networks to play annoying ads.

  • by polotics on 2/13/25, 7:00 AM

    could you provide an example of a website that shows this behaviour?

  • by oulipo on 2/13/25, 8:10 AM

    I made a small ViolentMonkey script to stop autoplay on Youtube, which is really annoying

        // ==UserScript==
    // @name        YouTube video page AutoPause
    // @namespace   https://greasyfork.org/en/users/13981-chk1
    // @description Automatically pause YouTube videos on Youtube video pages
    // @icon        https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/536ed9a8/img/favicon_96x96.png
    // @include     https://*.youtube.com/watch*
    // @include     http://*.youtube.com/watch*
    // @version     0.3
    // @grant       none
    // @run-at      document-end
    // ==/UserScript==
    
    (function () {
        'use strict';
        /**
         * Get element with selector and call callback with it.
         * @param {string} selector Selector for the element.
         * @param {function} callback Callback function to call with the element.
         */
        function forElement(selector, callback) {
            // Init forElement.timeoutCount.
            if (forElement.timeoutCount === undefined) {
                forElement.timeoutCount = {}
            }
            // Init forElement.timeoutCount[selector].
            if (forElement.timeoutCount[selector] === undefined) {
                forElement.timeoutCount[selector] = 0
            }
    
            // Get element.
            const element = document.querySelector(selector)
    
            // If element not found.
            if (element === null) {
                // try again after timeout.
                setTimeout(
                    function () {
                        forElement(selector, callback)
                    },
                    (
                        // Base timeout.
                        100
                        *
                        // Increase timeout after each try.
                        (forElement.timeoutCount[selector]++)
                    )
                )
            }
            // If element found
            else {
                // reset timeout count
                forElement.timeoutCount[selector] = 0
                // and call callback with element.
                callback(element)
            }
        }
    
        // Init previous video ID.
        let videoIdCurr = null;
    
        // Init paused video ID.
        let videoIdPaused = null
    
        // Init video element.
        let videoElement = null
    
        /**
         * On playing event.
         */
        function onPlaying() {
            // If video ID has not changed from last paused one
            if (videoIdPaused === videoIdCurr) {
                // just return.
                return
            }
    
            // Pause video
            videoElement.pause()
    
            // Update paused video ID.
            videoIdPaused = videoIdCurr
        }
    
        /**
         * Run on url change.
         */
        function onUrlChange() {
            // Get video id from url.
            const videoIdNew = (new URLSearchParams(window.location.search)).get("v");
            // If
            if (
                // did not get video id
                videoIdNew === null
                ||
                // or video id did not change
                videoIdNew === videoIdCurr
            ) {
                // just return.
                return
            }
    
            // Update previous video id.
            videoIdCurr = videoIdNew;
    
            // Run for
            forElement(
                // video element that has src attribute
                "video[src]",
                function (video) {
                    // If video element is set
                    if (videoElement) {
                        // remove event listener from video element.
                        videoElement.removeEventListener("playing", onPlaying);
                    }
    
                    // Update video element.
                    videoElement = video
    
                    // Add event listener to video element
                    videoElement.addEventListener("playing", onPlaying);
                }
            )
        }
    
        // Add event listener for
        window.addEventListener(
            // Youtube page data updated event.
            'yt-page-data-updated',
            function () {
                onUrlChange();
            }
        );
    
        // Run on url change once on first load.
        onUrlChange();
    })();

  • by Justta on 2/13/25, 7:22 AM

    Use uBlock to remove that element. Dont know if it will save data.

  • by slowmovintarget on 2/13/25, 2:26 PM

    Chrome is not for you. Chrome is for monetizing your attention.

  • by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B on 2/13/25, 7:44 AM

    Maybe they don’t want you to do that? YouTube has "autoplay next video" by default and you can’t disable that either. This is the kind of controlling behavior that I expect from Google.