Disable [Online] Video Autoplay (by Pat at SCLS)

How often have you been peacefully reading online content on your PC and some garish video unexpectedly takes over? Boom! Peace gone. You can configure your browsers to disable video autoplay. Here’s how.

​Before we get started, please note that not all browser versions may have some of the click-through options mentioned below. That could be interpreted in a variety of ways. It could be that the video autoplay was not enabled to begin with or your version of browser has a different set of steps to disable this feature. Consider the steps below as guidelines.

- Type “about:config” in the address bar.
- Accept the warning.
- Do a search for “media.autoplay.enabled”.
- Double-click it. This will set the ‘value’ to ‘false’ and will turn off HTML elements.
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- Go to “Tools” and select “Manage-add-ons”.
- Select “Tool bars and exensions” in the left pane.
- Locate and double-click “Shockwave Flash Object” on the right.
- Select the “Disable” button and then click the “Close” button.
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- Go to the Chrome Web Store.
- Search for “disable HTML5 autoplay”.
- Click the “Add to Chrome” button.
- Click the “Add extension” button in the pop-up.
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Each of these ‘disable’ steps are reversible. The effectiveness of the disable may vary from browser to browser but hopefully videos barging in on your reading will at least be diminished.  Peace out!