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

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.

Comments

So, how about video?

[Snotnose]

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.

February?

[Dan East]

Google Chrome Will No Longer Autoplay Content With Sound In January 2018

But what about February?

Re:Why then?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

It's because autoplaying videos is better for Facebook than YouTube right now.

Browsers should have limits

[Baron_Yam]

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.

how about off by default

[gravewax]

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

Re:how about off by default

[Rob Y.]

How about some nice, flexible options to allow you to control how video and other elements are handled. I certainly don't want video to autoplay anywhere - with sound or otherwise. Though it might be nice for it to start buffering automatically - but only enough so that if I were to hit play there'd be enough for it to start playing immediately. Currently, for example, Huffington Post insists on including autoplay video on almost every story it posts. I almost never want to view it. Especially, since there's usually a text-based transcript, which is quicker and easier to get me to what I opened the story for.

On Chrome, I've installed an extension that prevents the videos from starting - but they still download. On rare occasions, I do want to see the video - but for that to be a smooth experience, only a small portion would need to be downloaded. Then stream the rest if and when I actually ask to view it.

Re: Dear Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

about:config, then search for autoplay, set to false. done.

Google Chrome doesn't ...

[CaptainDork]

... auto-play now, because I use Firefox with AdBlockPro, uBlock Origin, and NoScript.

It takes a long time for me to temporarily allow shit to load, but that's that.

Re:Hmmmm

[Gavagai80]

A web browser should do what the end user asks the website to do. Not what the website asks the browser to do to the end user.

Why not now?

[MoarSauce123]

Why wait until January? This feature is long overdue.

Autistic or distrustful ?

[DrYak]

He's intentionally misinterpreting the "In January 2018" part of the title to mean "only during January 2018, and not outside of that month"

Is he ? really ?

Or maybe he's starting to get really distrustful of Google and ready that in February 2018, we'll get huge announcement that "google has decided to back-pedal on their 'no-autoplay' feature following important back-lash" (trans.: the advertisers were unhappy, and that might have jeopardized our shareholders plan to buy yet another Porsche).

Given that apart from a few android license (for the "full official google experience" beyond AOSP), and the recently introduced You Tube Red, and micro drop in the bucket of selling apps/movies/music/e-books on Google Play, they are mostly running on advertisers' money, that not entirely impossible~

Re:RTFS

[Grishnakh]

Why'd it take them so long? In fact, why does *any* browser allow auto-playing video? It should have been disallowed and blocked by the browsers as soon as the advertisers started doing it.