sharveson

Q: How do I turn off autoplay of video content in Safari?

Can someone tell me how to disable the auto play-back of video content when browsing on my iMac in Safari 8.0 (OS X 10.10)?  The question goes for all sites that post video content to start playing as soon as the page finishes populating.  If I want to watch the video, I want to proactively click "play," rather than have it start playing automatically.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 24, 2014 12:02 PM

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Q: How do I turn off autoplay of video content in Safari?

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  • by Atchoo,Helpful

    Atchoo Atchoo Sep 27, 2015 3:41 AM in response to Is there a vet in the house?
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Sep 27, 2015 3:41 AM in response to Is there a vet in the house?

    I just found a foolproof way to fix this issue in Safari 7 and up.

     

    • Download the extension "Adblock Plus" (Free, option to donate as much/little as you like)
    • Install and go to the options (Adblock button on the Safari toolbar)
    • Go to the "Add your own filters" tab, and add as many as you want to block
    • Examples (read section at bottom before you add filters):
      • "swf|" with the pipe symbol at the end, will block all media with a flash (swf) extension, at the end of the URL.
      • "mp4|" blocks all directly specifed quicktime streaming video files.
      • You can add specific domains too, like "||badautoplaysite.com/videoplayer" (the double pipe ensures that the filter is active only if the specified domain is in the beginning of the URL.

     

    Important:

    The examples above (mp4, swf) is concidered pretty "extreme" settings, so they will block ALL flash video etc on any domain. I have found it more effective to use the Adblock right click function. When you hover your mouse over any media element (video, html5, audio) you get a right click option to "Block this", and it will automatically add it to the filter.

     

    Advanced tip:

    For sites like macworld.com, where the content is pulled dynamically from a media url, you can click "Block this content", and edit the created filter so it says "||c.brightcove.com/services/mobile/streaming/index/" instead of the whole URL with one specific video (otherwise you´re only blocking 1 of 100 random videos).

    You can add white-listed domains as well, on the tab next to the filters. Seems like a good idea if you want to block all HTML5 video, except for instance Youtube and Vimeo.

     

    I suddenly realized this is probably the internet equivalent of telling your neighbour where the best fishing spot is, because now they will probably find another way to force-play the videos on us. But what the hey, there´s no other way to say it

     

    Hope it works for you, at least it helped me when all other options was ineffective.

     

    Andreas

  • by William Donelson,

    William Donelson William Donelson Sep 27, 2015 3:49 AM in response to Atchoo
    Level 4 (2,519 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2015 3:49 AM in response to Atchoo

    AdBlock does NOT work for sites that use forced Javascript etc to auto-play the videos.

  • by Atchoo,

    Atchoo Atchoo Sep 27, 2015 7:47 PM in response to William Donelson
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Sep 27, 2015 7:47 PM in response to William Donelson

    William Donelson wrote:

     

    AdBlock does NOT work for sites that use forced Javascript etc to auto-play the videos.

    Have you read everything I wrote? You can see a screenshot I just took of Macworld.com below. No video player. Clean Safari 9 with Adblock Plus and my custom filter configured like I described in my previous post. Macworld does indeed use forced javascript to autoplay videos, that´s how I knew what to block out.

    Here´s some more info on their filter functions.

    And by the way; I do not work for, or have any kind of personal bonds/relation to Adblock or its creators, I just wanted to share this method with other users who were looking for the same thing

     

    Best regards,

    Andreas

    Skjermbilde 2015-09-28 kl. 04.26.36.png

  • by William Donelson,

    William Donelson William Donelson Sep 28, 2015 3:41 AM in response to Atchoo
    Level 4 (2,519 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2015 3:41 AM in response to Atchoo

    I read everything you wrote. I just think it will block my own content.

     

    Try your blocker with NBCnews.com website; it's the worst I have found for auto play videos.

     

    For example this link about the pope

    NBCnews

  • by Atchoo,

    Atchoo Atchoo Sep 28, 2015 2:18 PM in response to William Donelson
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Sep 28, 2015 2:18 PM in response to William Donelson

    Firstly, it´s not "my blocker", but I see your point anyway. And you clearly said that ADBP does not work for sites with javascript autoplay, and that was the premise for my answer, now you´re just twisting it. I have no autoplay issues with NBCnews.com because I have blocked MP4 and SWF files from autoplaying in Adblock.

    I have whitelisted sites that I trust and my own content/domains, so I have no problems with that.

     

    Andreas

  • by alstern,

    alstern alstern Oct 2, 2015 5:53 PM in response to sharveson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 5:53 PM in response to sharveson

    To block autoplay ads from MacWorld (and many other sites), use OpenDNS instead of your ISP domain name server, and blacklist brightcove.com

  • by Silizium,

    Silizium Silizium Oct 23, 2015 1:39 AM in response to alstern
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 23, 2015 1:39 AM in response to alstern

    I found JS Blocker Safari extension has the solution for this problem. Although its a little complicate to configure and its not for free.

  • by diego_starr,

    diego_starr diego_starr Oct 31, 2015 8:47 AM in response to William Donelson
    Level 1 (12 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 31, 2015 8:47 AM in response to William Donelson

    Actually it's Preferences>Security>Plug-in Settings.  There I went to Adobe Flash and set CNN.com to "Ask" and it stopped autoplaying videos for me.  Try that for other sites giving autoplay issues too.  If it's not Flash, it should another of the plugins listed.

  • by Troy Shehan,

    Troy Shehan Troy Shehan Dec 16, 2015 3:35 PM in response to diego_starr
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Dec 16, 2015 3:35 PM in response to diego_starr

    Me too for the most part it seems.

    Something else to note:  there is a trusted list you will see.  And if you visit a site, and click "yes" to trust it to use Adobe Flash (usually a window appears asking),  DON'T.   If you do/have,  you need to go to the settings mentioned above and either change the option for the particular site, or remove it.   Then in the future, only click "never trust"  if given the option.    You can still click on videos to start them individually.

  • by UncklMike,

    UncklMike UncklMike Dec 22, 2015 1:53 PM in response to Troy Shehan
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 22, 2015 1:53 PM in response to Troy Shehan

    Building on others' posts, I think I've got it, though it works for blocking all videos.

     

    Here's how it works for CNN: Install Adblock Plus. Go to Options (click on ABP icon in Safari toolbar), then the "Add your own filters" tab. add a filter "||i2.cdn.turner.com|/". All the videos appear to be loaded from turner.com, so this blocks them. Though it blocks them completely, even if you want to manually play them they're blocked.

     

    For other sites, after installing Adblock plus, open a page with a bunch of their videos on it (on CNN there are a batch of video links with thumbnail images below the main, autoplaying, video for an article. Right-click on one of the thumbnails, left-click on "Block Element." On the "add filter" window that appears, select and copy the portion that seems to pertain to the videos. For NBC news, it appears to be "||media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video". Cancel the blocking, and go instead to Adblock options, Add your own filter tab. Paste the selection you just made and add a "|" to the end, and add the filter.

     

    Again, this completely blocks all videos from the site so you can't play them at all without removing the Adblock filter.

  • by UncklMike,

    UncklMike UncklMike Jan 5, 2016 7:13 AM in response to UncklMike
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 5, 2016 7:13 AM in response to UncklMike

    Update to the above, which is no longer completely blocking CNN videos. Apparently I misunderstood AdBlock's syntax. The above filters worked for a while, but today are no longer blocking all videos.

     

    So...instead of appending "|" to the end of each filter, append a "*" to the end of each line. So now I have two lines to block CNN autoplay videos:

     

    ||turner.com/*

    ||akamaihd.net/*

     

    (Blocking only akamaihd.net blocks the video from displaying, but the audio still autoplays. Blocking only turner.com seems to be enough to stop both video and audio, but akamaihd.net appears to have something to do with CNN's mp4 for IOS, so I'm playing it safe by blocking both domains.)

  • by RedneckBob,

    RedneckBob RedneckBob Feb 7, 2016 5:34 AM in response to iBlick
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 7, 2016 5:34 AM in response to iBlick

    I installed uBlock the ad blocker, so not only do I not get ads, but it allows me to block autoplay videos on CNN and ABCnews.  Go to ublock.com.

     

    I'm amazed at how much faster sites are with out ads or autoload videos!!!

  • by TimTamTom,

    TimTamTom TimTamTom Feb 22, 2016 8:56 AM in response to UncklMike
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 22, 2016 8:56 AM in response to UncklMike

    I think this is our issue:

     

    "The online video delivery platform Brightcove today announced new technology that defeats software that blocks video ads on desktop and mobile devices.

    The anti-ad-blocking capability is part of Brightcove Lift, the company’s ad optimization solution, which helps companies maximize the revenues they see from video ads placed on the desktop and mobile.

    Brightcove provides an HTML5 video player into which it serves its clients’ videos in the mobile or desktop browser, and serves the ads around them.

    Brightcove said the technology “stitches” ads into video content streams in the cloud, making them harder to isolate and block. These continuous video streams also keep viewers watching by reducing buffering times between the video and the ads, Brightcove said."

     

    http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/26/brightcoves-new-cloud-tech-hides-video-ads-fro m-ad-blockers/

  • by WinstonE,

    WinstonE WinstonE Apr 5, 2016 10:09 AM in response to RedneckBob
    Level 2 (283 points)
    iPad
    Apr 5, 2016 10:09 AM in response to RedneckBob

    Be aware that uBlock is no longer being updated. There is a separate fork of uBlock, called uBlock Origin, that is still active, but it does not support Safari. uBlock Origin does work on Firefox and Chrome.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock

     

    RedneckBob wrote:

     

    I installed uBlock the ad blocker, so not only do I not get ads, but it allows me to block autoplay videos on CNN and ABCnews.  Go to ublock.com.

     

    I'm amazed at how much faster sites are with out ads or autoload videos!!!

  • by freediverx01,

    freediverx01 freediverx01 Apr 5, 2016 10:14 AM in response to WinstonE
    Level 1 (90 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 5, 2016 10:14 AM in response to WinstonE

    Be aware that uBlock is no longer being updated. There is a separate fork of uBlock, called uBlock Origin, that is still active, but it does not support Safari. uBlock Origin does work on Firefox and Chrome.

    I'm not about to switch to an inferior browser just for the sake of a content blocker,

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