Autoplay videos are a scourge. And no, I’m not talking about YouTube, Netflix or any other website you visit just to stream video. Those are websites that you visit primarily for the purpose of reading. Instead, you’re bombarded with stupid videos that start playing somewhere in a page.
Most of these videos are simply meaningless. Not only that, but they also come with increased page load times and consume a lot of bandwidth in the process.
Thankfully, Firefox now has the ability to block these annoying videos from playing automatically. In the end, you won’t have to rely on extensions (which may or may not work) to help you with that.
However, there is a caveat. Mozilla’s web browser only blocks videos that can be heard (not muted). So muted videos can still cause you grief. But don’t worry. I’ll show you a nifty workaround to block them.
Note: Before continuing, make sure you have the latest Firefox update installed. To do that, open the Firefox menu, click Help, and then click About Firefox. If a new update is available, it will automatically start downloading and installing.
Disable autoplay videos
Mozilla added the ability to block autoplay (and unmute) videos in Firefox browser update version 66.0. However, you still need to enable this function manually before the browser can actually stop playing videos automatically. The following steps show you how to do that.
Step 1: Open the Firefox menu, then click Options.
Step 2: Click the Privacy & Security side tab. Next, scroll down to the section labeled Permissions, then check the box next to Block websites from automatically playing sounds.
That’s it. Upload to any pesky website that plays videos with your speakers. And you’ll be happy to know that those videos no longer autoplay. Instead, you’ll see them paused. CNN is a perfect example to test this amazing functionality in practice.
Of course, you can play blocked videos manually whenever you want by clicking the Play icon in the video pane. That’s how it should be all along.
Whitelist website
Obviously, you wouldn’t want Firefox to disable automatic video playing on websites that exist primarily for video streaming. It breaks the experience. For example, I find Firefox blocks autoplaying YouTube videos whenever I want to open them in a new tab, which is uninteresting and odd.
I checked if I could remove this restriction and found out that I can do it pretty easily.
Whenever Firefox blocks a video from autoplaying, you’ll see a small icon representing the truth in the left corner of the URL bar. Click it. On the context menu that appears, click the pull-down menu next to Autoplay Sound, then select Allow. Firefox will no longer block videos from specific websites.
Alternatively, you can choose to go back to where you had to enable autoplay video blocking in the first place. Then use the Exceptions button next to Block Websites AutoPlay Sound to exclude websites by inserting the URL directly. That’s where you should go to manage your exceptions.
Disable muted video
If you also don’t like muted videos (I know I do), then you can rely on a simple alternative to get Firefox to disable those videos too with its latest video blocking function . Do not worry. You don’t have to install any extensions! All you have to do is change a single Firefox preference, which you can do using the built-in Configuration Editor.
Step 1: On a new tab, type About: config, and then press Enter. When prompted, click the I accept the risk! to continue. Just so you know, there’s no reason to be scared by that prompt. Follow my instructions, and you’ll be fine.
Step 2: Enter media.autoplay.allow-muted in the search bar at the top of the Configuration Editor. That will filter the specific Firefox option from the others.
Step 3: Double-click the filtered option to change its value from ‘true’ to ‘false’. Close the tab to save your changes.
And that’s it. You should find all videos, regardless of whether they are muted or not, are blocked from playing automatically. Of course, you can exclude videos from being blocked on certain sites just like with unblocked videos.
What a threat!
Autoplay videos are the worst way to push content to visitors, and I wish publishers understood that. The fact that they have managed to roll out more videos over the years probably means that they don’t care much about their audience. Agree with Mozilla for providing native functionality to stop this threat on its own.
Next up: Did you know that malicious code wrapped in a seemingly innocuous extension can hijack Firefox to mine cryptocurrency without your knowledge? If you’re worried, here’s how to prevent that from happening.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
