instagram.com videos cannot be played anymore when media.autoplay.enabled == false

[andikay]

A few weeks ago I noticed that I cannot play videos on the instagram website anymore, which used to work just fine before. There are two types of videos on instagram, one with dedicated player buttons and one with a big play button in the middle and the mute button in the bottom right. The first type still works flawlessly, but the second type cannot be played anymore when the setting media.autoplay.enabled is set to false. I can click the "play" button in the middle of the video but nothing happens.

Example for the first type: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ8-5l0AoRQ/
Example for the second type: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRjQPRogJjd/

I have tested this with my usual PM profile as well as a completely fresh profile, PM version is 29.4.5 32bit (the issue existed with 29.4.4 as well). I first thought it might be caused by one of my addons, but after I got a separate PM portable with a completely fresh profile and set media.autoplay.enabled to false the behavior could be reproduced instantly. I checked the error console and the developer console, but no errors are displayed. I don't have this issue with Firefox with autoplay disabled (media.autoplay.default == 5).

[basicuser]

I’m on PM 30.0.0 on Mint 20.3 and have no problem with either link.

You might try using the add on “Autoplay Toggle” found in add ons under Extensions: Other.

It toggles two config settings to true or false at the same time. They are: media.autoplay.allowscripted and media.autoplay.enabled.

It will put a handy button on the navigation toolbar.

Good luck.

[Pallid Planetoid]

I get the same result for your 2nd video (https://www.instagram.com/p/CRjQPRogJjd/) with media.autoplay.enabled pref set to "False" (I signed-up with Instagram just to test this - otherwise not an app I'm interested in personally)

I happen to use the the add-on “Autoplay Toggle” mentioned by basicuser above of which I can leave the setting Toggled to "OFF" which will then not "auto" play the video (which is what I presume you want) but will play by simply toggling the extension to "ON" - giving you the (convenient) control you presumably want. (FYI: this extension conveniently toggles the value in the about:config pref setting "media.autoplay.enabled")

Note: I'm currently on Pale Moon v29.4.5 -- which may be critical at this point based on what version you (andikay) happen to be using.

[Cassette]

If you're like me and prefer to have the default behavior to not allow autoplay except for on select domains, try the extension Autoplay Whitelist. By default autoplay is disabled everywhere and with the same kind of control mechanism as Autoplay Toggle, you just click the button and that allows the domain you're on only to then autoplay.

[andikay]

I just created the topic so the developer(s) can take a look at it and hopefully fix it in the upcoming release =). I don't want to have to manually toggle it on/off and I don't want autoplay at all, no matter which domain. But I want the play button to work when I press it .