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Google Chrome will ditch annoying autoplay videos in January
Somehow web designers have still not learned that autoplay videos are almost universally hated by users, but Google LLC seems to have finally caught on—mostly. Google announced today that an upcoming update to Chrome will block autoplay videos unless they meet specific requirements that make them less irritating.
In Chrome 63, which will roll out sometime in October, users will finally have the option to disable autoplay videos on individual sites, and the browser will remember their decision across sessions. A later update will further expand Chrome’s anti-autoplay features by automatically blocking autoplay videos unless they meet certain conditions.
“Starting in Chrome 64, autoplay will be allowed when either the media won’t play sound, or the user has indicated an interest in the media,” said Mounir Lamouri, a software engineer on the Google Chrome team. “This will allow autoplay to occur when users want media to play, and respect users’ wishes when they don’t. These changes will also unify desktop and mobile web behavior, making web media development more predictable across platforms and browsers.”
The new features will not only allow users to avoid obnoxiously loud videos that they do not want to see anyway, but it will also help them consume less data and battery life on their mobile devices.
Google Chrome’s new policy will still allow autoplay videos in some cases, but Google still advises developers to use them sparingly. “Autoplay can be a powerful engagement tool,” Google says in a guide for developers, “but it can also annoy users if undesired sound is played or they perceive unnecessary resource usage (e.g. data, battery) as the result of unwanted video playback.”
Google also said that developers should also allow users to control videos using the browser’s default video controls and that sound should be disabled unless a user specifically enables it.
Photo: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga Commons)(Lmbuga Galipedia)Publicada por/Publish by: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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