How do I reliably prevent autoplay in Firefox 91?

Question

I would like no video or audio to play unless I click on it. After this morning's upgrade to version 91, I am back to videos on Twitter (and possibly elsewhere) starting to auto-play just by scrolling into view. In my preferences, I have "Block Audio and Video" for all sites with no exceptions. In my Twitter profile, I have "Autoplay" set to "Never", but, I also look at threads without logging in.Do you know what I need to do to be able to look at a Twitter thread while not logged in without triggering autoplay? Unfortunately, I do not remember what I had done previously which made it so that I almost never encountered autoplaying media on any site.

zwegner · Accepted Answer

The solution I use is to set media.autoplay.blocking_policy to 2 in about:config (I found this on the Mozilla wiki [1]). This setting requires a click to play media.
Incidentally, I browse Twitter while logged in, but the autoplay settings are "per-browser", and Firefox's anti-fingerprinting mode makes Twitter think you're using a new browser on each visit, and thus keeps autoplaying all the time without the above setting. Pretty irritating.
[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/block-autoplay

FridayoLeary · Answer

Autoplay is toxic. I think all webpages should be completely static by default. By law.

dublinben · Answer

You might be interested in the alternative Twitter front-end Nitter[0] which does not autoplay videos. There's even extensions for Firefox etc. and you could run your own instance if you so chose.[0]https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

alpaca128 · Answer

It's frustrating how sites just ignore or circumvent this setting. Some sites just pretend this option doesn't exist and their video player breaks. This setting helps a little but never worked 100% for me. On YouTube I always open a video in a new tab. For some reason that prevents autoplay.It would be pretty nice to have a setting that not only reliably blocks autoplay of videos but also animated gifs. Most of the time they're just distracting.

Causality1 · Answer

In my preferences, I have "Block Audio and Video" for all sites with no exceptionsIf the browser can't control whether the video player plays or pauses then that option should prevent the browser from loading the player module at all until the user clicks on it. Unfortunately broken player windows would make things look slightly less polished, and if there's anything consistent about Firefox it's their willingness to look good even if it means bending over their power users.

gumby · Answer

This is why I miss Flash: by not installing it I didn&rsquo;t have to deal with blasting audio, video, or sites that required a stupid journey or game in order to simply use them.

tech234a · Answer

On Chromium-based browsers I use an extension called AutoplayStopper [1] which works well for me. It allows you to add exceptions for certain sites too which is helpful.[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ej...

timbit42 · Answer

I'm using the Video Autoplay Blocker for Firefox. It stops videos from playing until you click their "Watch Video" button on the top left corner of the video.

musicale · Answer

Why is it that no popular browser seems to have a simple, built-in "block autoplay" setting that actually works?Firefox - noSafari - noChrome - no

How do I reliably prevent autoplay in Firefox 91?

Autoplay is toxic. I think all webpages should be completely static by default. By law.

You might be interested in the alternative Twitter front-end Nitter[0] which does not autoplay videos. There's even extensions for Firefox etc. and you could run your own instance if you so chose.
[0]https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

This is why I miss Flash: by not installing it I didn’t have to deal with blasting audio, video, or sites that required a stupid journey or game in order to simply use them.

On Chromium-based browsers I use an extension called AutoplayStopper [1] which works well for me. It allows you to add exceptions for certain sites too which is helpful.
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ej...

I'm using the Video Autoplay Blocker for Firefox. It stops videos from playing until you click their "Watch Video" button on the top left corner of the video.

Why is it that no popular browser seems to have a simple, built-in "block autoplay" setting that actually works?
Firefox - no
Safari - no
Chrome - no