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Turning off automatic video playback

Opera for Windows
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  • kentk9

    Hello Opera

    Just a quick question: Some websites (like CNN) start to play videos automatically, even when you haven't clicked 'play'. Personally, I find this tactic annoying and intrusive, and it sometimes results in a page crash. Is there any way to turn off this 'auto play' feature? Thanks in advance.

    PS: I just searched the Opera forum and found this topic discussed on 32 pages. Too lazy to read all 32 pages. Has there been any progress toward disabling auto-play? How about a quick re-cap from a kind soul? Thanks again.

    And while I'm on a roll, here's a message to CNN and all the other websites that engage in this practice: 'If I want to watch your f-ing video, I will click on the f-ing PLAY VIDEO icon'. There. I always feel better after venting 🙂

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  • burnout426

    In Opera, goto the URL opera://flags/#sound-content-setting, enable the flag and restart. Then, in Opera, goto the URL opera://settings/content/sound. There you can disable autoplay by default and then override it per site. When you're on a site, you can right-click on the badge at the left of the address field, goto site settings and change the sound setting for that site.

    You can also go into opera://flags and search for autoplay. There are a few settings you can play with if you want.

    You can also right-click on a tab and choose "mute" or "mute other tabs".

    See https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/audio-video/autoplay and https://blog.chromium.org/2017/09/unified-autoplay.html.

    1 1 Reply
  • kentk9

    Thank you very much, burnout426. I'll try those urls tomorrow when I'm back at my PC. Much appreciated!

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  • kentk9

    Holy browser nerd, Batman! Back at my PC, just looked at the back-door links you provided. That should keep me busy for the next millennium. 🙂 Thanks again.

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  • leocg
    Moderator

    Here on Opera developer 60 enabling that flag only gives me an option to turn off/on sound on sites but not to disable autoplay.

    1 1 Reply
  • kentk9

    Looking at all of those confusing settings in the links above, I must say, it would be really great if we had the option to simply 'toggle on/off' auto-play from within the Opera homepage. Consider this a polite request. I'm sure there are more pressing concerns for the developers, but at the end of the day, WE should be the ones who control what's playing on our screens, not CNN. As websites become more aggressive in 'pushing' their crap down our throats, we need to have the tools to be able to push back. Anyway, thanks to Opera, for providing us with a forum to make these requests. There is no such forum on CNN.

    4 1 Reply
  • burnout426

    @leocg said in Turning off automatic video playback:

    Here on Opera developer 60 enabling that flag only gives me an option to turn off/on sound on sites but not to disable autoplay.

    Yeah, sorry, true. You can disable sound globally and right-click on a tab to unmute it when you want, but it doesn't actually disable automatic playback. Videos and such still play. They're just muted by default in that case. So, not actually what's desired.

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  • l33t4opera

    Hi @kentk9, for that purpose, you can try to use the "AutoplayStopper" extension from the Chrome Web Store.

    1 2 Replies
  • kentk9

    @l33t4opera Thanks for the tip! I'll check it out. 🙂

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  • l33t4opera

    @kentk9 You're welcome ;-)

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  • yomauser

    @l33t4opera That app is for Chrome Browser not for Opera.
    Disable HTML5 Autoplay is one good app for Opera.

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