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PSA: Google Chrome Now Lets You Permanently Mute Websites That Autoplay Videos (independent.co.uk)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sanity-saving-features dept.

Google is releasing a new version of Chrome this week and it includes a number of new features, such as an improved ad blocker and Spectre mitigations. The best new feature in Chrome 64 is the ability to permanently mute websites that autoplay videos. This feature was teased for several months, but now it's finally here. The Independent reports: To mute a site that automatically plays videos, users will need click the View Site Information symbol, which may look like a green padlock, on the left-hand edge of the omnibar -- the address bar combined with the Google search box. Then they will need to select Sound. Once the website is muted, it will not automatically play videos with sound again until you unmute it.

7 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Autoplay whitelist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about Google disable autoplay by default and allow us to whitelist sites that we want to allow autoplay on? Give control back to the users. Oh right, users are the product, and Google is focused on their customers (advertisers).

    1. Re: Autoplay whitelist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The fuck?

      You are defending autoplay videos... You either work for Google, Facebook, or are a complete fucking moron.

    2. Re:Autoplay whitelist by flopsquad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. This solution is nice if there's a few websites that you visit regularly that are so afflicted

      And this story pops up right next to one about CNN...

      Fuck autoplay video at the top of every page, and double fuck turning it into a tiny sidebar video and restarting it after you scroll past it.

      --
      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
    3. Re:Autoplay whitelist by dwillden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This! Just muting the sounds is nice, but it still streams the data downloading the entire video file. Autoplay is evil and needs to be Opt in only. I might want it on YouTube or a similar site. I don't want it on every single news site and blog out there.

      --
      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
  2. Click-to-run by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not treat video like a plugin and let users white list sites we will allow video to run at all on.

  3. Re:Mute? by markdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >How about not loading the videos, period?

    +100

    Muting videos is nowhere near enough... it is a great start, but not a finish. Many people want that NO videos should ever play unless the user specifically requests it by clicking on something. THAT should be a user choice. Muted videos still chew through bandwidth and CPU and batteries. But most importantly, they are extremely annoying and distracting. And many sites now even force the damn things to FOLLOW the user while they are trying to read an article!

  4. Re:GIF would be even worse by markdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >"Google's rationale behind allowing muted autoplaying video [google.com] is that if the video fails to load, playback is likely to fall back to a GIF animation, which uses your bandwidth even less efficiently:"

    Which is why browsers like Firefox ALSO allow the user to disable playback of animated GIFs. Perhaps that should be an option in Chrome....