Good old Mozilla. The Mozilla Foundation has built itself a solid reputation for protecting user privacy while offering top-notch web services. We recently saw the introduction of Firefox Send , which offers a free and easy way to send huge files to whoever you want. Firefox though, Mozilla’s ever-present web browser is the not-for-profit foundation’s jewel in the crown. The browser is Google Chrome’s biggest competitor and Mozilla keeps working hard to give it the latest features.
Firefox update will block autoplay videos with sound and stop slow loading ads
This is now a standard feature – blocking all autoplay videos you come across that play with sound. Videos that autoplay without sound, however, will not be blocked. This means videos that play in your Facebook feed or Twitter feeds will make it through the blockade. This will either be good news or bad news for you, depending on your social media habits.
The new feature was announced in the release notes for the latest Firefox update, Firefox 66 , with a couple of scenarios fleshed out. If you think autoplay videos with sound are annoying or if you usually browse the internet in environments were silence is paramount, you’ll be interested in the first scenario.
“Scenario #1 – For anyone who wants peace and quiet on the web: Go to a site that plays videos or audio, it could be a news site or site known for hosting movies and television shows, the Block Autoplay feature will stop the audio and video from automatically playing. If you want to view the video, simply click on the play button to watch it.”
The second scenario Mozilla highlighted speaks to all you binge watchers out there. Should you be watching your favorite TV shows on Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube (autoplay videos with sound) the new feature won’t block them from playing so you still won’t have to budge from the couch.
Google Chrome has had a similar feature for almost a year now , but the feature is limited in scope and a bit tricky. Whereas the new Firefox solution blocks autoplay videos with sound automatically, you have to do a lot of messing around to get it set up on Chrome. Chrome allows autoplay videos with sound from 1,000 popular sites and blocks the rest. To block those 1,00 sites, though, you need to fiddle around with bits of code in the address bar. If you’d like a full tutorial on this, hit us up in the comments.
The Firefox solution works the opposite way to Chrome. By default, all sites are blocked from auto-playing videos with sound, and the onus is on you to allow videos through the default block or turn the block off altogether. You’ll find full instructions on how to do both here .
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