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Google Chrome Will No Longer Autoplay Content With Sound In January 2018 (venturebeat.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the attention-seeking dept.

Starting next year, Google Chrome will only autoplay a given piece of content when the media won't play sound or the user has indicated an interest in the media. The company was experimenting with such an option last month, but now it looks to be part of the browser's roadmap. VentureBeat reports: Chrome 63 will add a new user option to completely disable audio for individual sites. This site-muting option will persist between browsing sessions, allowing users to customize when and where audio will play. Chrome 64 will take the controls to the next level. By this version, Google's browser will allow autoplay to occur only when users want media to play. Here is Google's timeline for making autoplaying sound more consistent with user expectations in Chrome: September 2017: Site muting available in Chrome 63 Beta, begin collecting Media Engagement Index (MEI) data in Chrome 62 Canary and Dev; October 2017: Site muting available in Chrome 63 Stable, autoplay policies available in Chrome 63 Canary and Dev; December 2017: Autoplay policies available in Chrome 64 Beta; January 2018: Autoplay policies available in 64 Stable.

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. So, how about video? by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate autoplay video. I never want to see them, and they suck up my bandwidth even when I set them to stop (they keep loading , thinking I'll change my mind).

    Google, I know you own youtube. But FFS I don't want 99.999% of the videos websites want to push on me. I don't want them eating up my bandwidth. I don't want them sucking up my memory. I flat out do not fucking want auto play video to do anything but fail for me.

  2. Browsers should have limits by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anything 'multimedia' should get a placeholder that needs to be clicked before it even starts to download, never mind play.

    Anything cross-site should be blocked - scripts, images, style sheets... I don't care. Host it on your own server or proxy it or it shouldn't display. And in addition to being hosted on the same site, a script shouldn't be allowed to request resources from any site but the one it is loaded from.

    Cookies... I can't think of a good way to stop cookies from being used as trackers except to have it be standard that they use plain language tags and browsers offer a pop-up to show the cookies the site you're currently on is using or has placed on your system, along with the ability to delete any values you want.

  3. how about off by default by gravewax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how about NO FUCKING AUTO PLAY AT ALL option. I want audio and video to play ONLY when I tell it to play.