Disabling Auto-Play Videos

[CharmCityCrab]

On Chrome, I was able to set it up so that videos on open tabs that the sites set to run automatically would not run. I'd get a little box instead indicating that there was a video, and a button I could click to play the video when I got around to looking at the tab, if I wanted to play the video.

What's the Pale Moon equivalent of that? Is there an option somewhere I can change? An add-on I should download?

End goal being videos don't play unless I specifically click on them, but that I don't disabled videos entirely to where I'd have to start flipping options or add-ons on and off every time I want to watch something.

[megaman]

There are lots of add-ons that do that.

Look-up Magic Actions for YouTube, or YouTube Center.
You can also use Bar-Tab and set it to not load New Tabs opened, so it loads when you need it.

[Sowmoots]

Hello CharmCityCrab,
You can install the addon Click to Play per-element to get the behaviour you want. Make sure to also set plugins.click_to_play to "true" in about:config, and set the required plugins to "Ask to activate" in about:addons.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... 7.1-signed

[megaman]

You can install the addon Click to Play per-element to get the behaviour you want. Make sure to also set plugins.click_to_play to "true" in about:config, and set the required plugins to "Ask to activate"

I would suggest that, assuming that YouTube still plays in Flash Mode by default.

[CharmCityCrab]

Hello CharmCityCrab,
You can install the addon Click to Play per-element to get the behaviour you want. Make sure to also set plugins.click_to_play to "true" in about:config, and set the required plugins to "Ask to activate" in about:addons.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... 7.1-signed

Click to play doesn't stop the video on this page:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/26/technol ... =obnetwork

I mean, really, one can only take so much of Steve Balmer's yelling before one wants to switch to a browser that doesn't support audio or video.

[CharmCityCrab]

You can install the addon Click to Play per-element to get the behaviour you want. Make sure to also set plugins.click_to_play to "true" in about:config, and set the required plugins to "Ask to activate"

I would suggest that, assuming that YouTube still plays in Flash Mode by default.

I don't think I even installed Flash. My impression is that things are playing in HTML 5. HTML 5, as an almost open standard (DRM-encumbered stuff aside) is better in most senses, but I don't know how to stop it from auto-playing. A flash blocker probably wouldn't do it, assuming the name reflects what it does and it hasn't added HTML5 video blocking to it's feature set.

[megaman]

HTML 5, as an almost open standard (DRM-encumbered stuff aside) is better in most senses, but I don't know how to stop it from auto-playing.

Correct the Flasblock add-on simply blocks Flash and Silverlight, not HTML5.
Right, HTML5 is resource friendly, but did you see my suggestion?
There are add-ons that are solely-based on blocking videos from playing under the HTML5 format, simply searching the Firefox Add-ons site.

[broch]

While it is simple to stop Flash autoplay without using any extension, this (autoplay HTML5) is old bug in Firefox and in consequence in Pale Moon. See four years old discussion at bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659285

You can try this:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... src=search
but reviews are not promising


actually I did find a way to block HTML5 autoplay completely (I just found it a minute ago so not sure how effective this will be);
about:config
media.webm.enabled;false

[Toa-Nuva]

Personally, I used the NoScript addon for this purpose for quite some time. I actually kinda "abused" the addon in a way it's not really supposed to be used. In the NoScript configuration, in the tab "Whitelist" I enabled "Scripts Globally Allowed (dangerous)" (after all, I wanted to disable videos, not JavaScript), and in the tab "Embeddings", I enabled "Forbid <AUDIO> / <VIDEO>" and "Apply these restrictions to whitelisted sites too". That did the trick for me, most of the time. Unfortunately, on some sites the Click-to-Play feature didn't work (e.g., there was no Click-to-Play area, or it just wasn't clickable), and some pages just broke in strange ways, so I gave up on this after I while. But it might be worth a try, maybe it works for you.

(As a side note, if you're using any plugins, you should make sure that they are not blocked/set to "ask to activate" in both NoScript and about:addons, because otherwise you'll have to confirm multiple times whenever you want to allow a plugin.)

[Tony0945]

actually I did find a way to block HTML5 autoplay completely (I just found it a minute ago so not sure how effective this will be);
about:config
media.webm.enabled;false

Unfortunately that syops them completely. There is no click to play.

[LimboSlam]

If it's HTML5, it should be fixed in beta 3. See here: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9899

[blind12]

If it's HTML5, it should be fixed in beta 3. See here: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9899

Beta 3 of what? I currently have Palemoon 25.8.0. Cannot ask in that thread as it's locked.

[megaman]

Beta 3 of what? I currently have Palemoon 25.8.0. Cannot ask in that thread as it's locked.

Palemoon 26 Beta 3, which is a Public BETA and you can use it if you wish, but it's not ready for mainstream and it's not fully-optimized, so YourMileageMayVary.

[Moonchild]

As a note, I've implemented something extra to give more control which will be in the final version. It's an extra preference specifically to control scripted playback. Just disabling media.autoplay.enabled will still allow scripted events (so it'd be the old behavior) and also setting media.autoplay.allowscripted to false will be the new "block autoplay" behavior, this to provide intermediate level of blocking and avoiding the inherent issues with blocking everything.

[anonemous1]

As a note, I've implemented something extra to give more control which will be in the final version. It's an extra preference specifically to control scripted playback. Just disabling media.autoplay.enabled will still allow scripted events (so it'd be the old behavior) and also setting media.autoplay.allowscripted to false will be the new "block autoplay" behavior, this to provide intermediate level of blocking and avoiding the inherent issues with blocking everything.

Hi! I know this is probably a stupid question and you probably covered this somewhere... But how do I set the setting to false? Is there something I'm missing here? I checked Options and Advanced Options (PM Commander), but couldn't find it. Maybe it could be added to Pale Moon Commander?

Thank you!
Sincerely,
Anon

[Moonchild]

In the address bar, type about:config and press enter
This will give you a list of advanced preferences (please don't willy-nilly change other ones unless you know what you're doing).

Find the named preference and double-click it to flip it to false.

[anonemous1]

In the address bar, type about:config and press enter
This will give you a list of advanced preferences (please don't willy-nilly change other ones unless you know what you're doing).

Find the named preference and double-click it to flip it to false.

Thanks you! Found it

[Pallid Planetoid]

As I understand it, setting both media.autoplay.enabled and media.autoplay.allowscripted to "false" should prevent videos from playing automatically hence the user should be required to start the video.

I'm finding that youtube videos will still start automatically whenever a youtube page video gets loaded with both of these prefs set to "false", what am I missing here? (I closed/opened browser in case this is necessary)

[LimboSlam]

I'm finding that youtube videos will still start automatically whenever a youtube page video gets loaded with both of these prefs set to "false", what am I missing here? (I closed/opened browser in case this is necessary)

Confirmed.

[megaman]

I'm finding that youtube videos will still start automatically whenever a youtube page video gets loaded with both of these prefs set to "false", what am I missing here? (I closed/opened browser in case this is necessary)

Then, it might have switched to FLASH, I get no such thing.