Autoplay settings are wonky, or poorly explained.
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Hello there.
There are a lot of threads about Autoplay settings, but as far as I could find, they were mostly about Disabling Autplay not working.
I disabled Autoplay in general settings, because I was having issues, with saved youtube tabs playing, when I opened the browser.
After doing this, I found that this was a bad Idea for a lot of other websites, where I enjoy having Autoplay enabled.. Like Netflix, where it automatically loads the next episode, after the previous finishes.
I enabled Autoplay again, in general settings, and blocked Youtube specifically from autoplaying. Even after doing this though, Autoplay was still blocked on all sites, and sites like Disney+ would not load any content.. just giving me the little Autoplay blocked Icon in the address bar, despite, the general settings AND the sites specific settings allowing autoplay.
Later on I found a thread where this link was mentioned: vivaldi://settings/content/autoplay. On this page, I can see that General Autplay is enabled. You tube is blocked, and No pages are allowed.
After removing Youtube from the blocked list here, every site autoplays automatically again..So If I understand correctly, If I block Autoplay from just 1 site. I need to manually allow Autoplay for each site I want Autoplay to work on, despite the default setting, being Allowed ?
I have seen some stuff like that on some strange FTP servers before =)...I am a long time FF user, Like 16-17 years I think.. But have gotten tired, with how they spent the last 6-7 years breaking it, for their old users.. (Why stop using FF Addons, Why forcing Proton..) Vivaldi, looks like it could be my new daily driver, but certainly still has some kinks to work out, but I do enjoy seeing some of the things I was missing last time I tried Vivaldi, actually working quite well now.. Nice to actually see progress in a browser.
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@timone
Hi, I have autoplay disabled globally in the Privacy settings of Vivaldi and I guess you meant chrome://settings/content/autoplay.
The page change to vivaldi://
No idea if this setting work in Vivaldi, use the setting in vivaldi://settings/privacy/
If you want to change this for a page, open the site settings > Padlock icon in the address bar.
This does not overwrite the Youtube autoplay setting, if you disable it there the Vivaldi setting is useless.Cheers, mib
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Thanks for the reply, but I think it just repeats what I did.. I think you are right about the link with Vivaldi:/xx vs Chrome://xx.. pretty sure I wrote Chrome:// but it was auto translated
I had disabled Youtube with the padlock for the specific site, and allowed autoplay in; Settings Privacy and Security - Default permissions:
Even when I had that on Autoplay Allow, no site would autoplay, until I found the vivaldi://settings/content/autoplay (chrome or vivaldi works
) and removed youtube from the Blocked list.So looks like having 1 site blocked, means all sites are blocked, but specifically Allowed sites.. Or am I the only one seeing this ?
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@timone
Ah OK, I understand you want to auto play YT videos, anyway.
I have it disabled globally in the Vivaldi setting but enabled in the site settings for:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/secret-invasion-season-1-episode-1-release-date-time-channel-plot/Autoplay start.
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@mib2berlin
Ok.. you dont seem to understand what I am saying at all..
the issue is that blocking 1 site from autoplaying, by using that sites specific settings under the padlock icon, means that ALL sites are blocked, EVEN when Autoplay is enabled in default permission settings. -
@timone
I am not native englisch but if I disable autoplay on one page it does NOT block it on other pages.
Maybe other user can help better here.Cheers, mib
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@mib2berlin Ok.. so not the same result I am getting.. Strange
Thanks for testing.Just did a test, where I blocked Youtube specifically, and all other sites stop autoplaying. Then I enable Autoplay on Netflix specifically, and Netflix now autoplays.. But all other sites still wont allow Autoplay despite the default setting being to allow Autoplay..
for info.. Win11 25393.1. Vivaldi: 6.0.2979.25 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
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@timone YouTube and other heavy web apps are not a good test for this. For instance YT has its own autoplay, and it depends on stuff like if you're signed in etc.
Vivaldi's autoplay "blocker" is basically just Chromium's mostly broken implementation. Like most of Chromium, it generally overcomplicates things, tries to second-guess what the user "wants" based on obscure tracking parameters like "Media Engagement".
You can read about it here:
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/
So all these metrics and guesswork going on makes it difficult to even do comparison testing between users because there's so many variables.For some strange reason, the
chrome://settings/content/autoplaydoes not even exist in Chromium 114, and there is no site-specific settings toggle. Which indicates to me that they've decided "this works, lets leave it to the metrics to decide what the user wants".He** I don't even know if the feature works properly in Vivaldi anymore... it's not something I've tested much to be honest.
Autoplay is one of the most "misunderstood" features, and users seem to think it's some kind of "silver bullet" but the reality is no-one knows how it actually works or even if it works...
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@Pathduck
Alright.. didnt know it worked by magic
I will leave it off in general for now, and just let pages Autoplay.. I think I want that more than blocking all pages.
It does however seem that, you can disable Autoplay generally, and then whitelist the pages you want, manually..
But if it is indeed, as voodoo based as you say, then it remains to be seen if that actually works as expected..Thanks for the replies. At least it proves that I might not be entirely crazy.
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@timone
Ah OK, I test on Vivaldi 6.1.3035.84 which is Chromium 114, Vivaldi 6.0 was Chromium 112.
As I always test in a clean profile I have no site specific settings.
I have a Netflix account, we can use this to test
Update Vivaldi if possible and add 1-2 links with videos without need an account to test this.
As @Pathduck mention, even we find a bug in Vivaldi the developer won´t/cant fix it if it is a Chromium bug.
It is maybe time to think about an extension for this, I use Disable HTML5 Autoplay for Years.
Now I block autoplay on every site, if possible.Cheers, mib
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@timone said in Autoplay settings are wonky, or poorly explained.:
Win11 25393.1. Vivaldi: 6.0.2979.25
Oh yeah, didn't notice that.
Please upgrade your browser, we can't support running older versions here. -
@Pathduck
Just for the sake of testing, I updated to latest offered build, 6.1.3035.84 (Stable channel) (64-bit). And seeing same outcome. -
@timone said in Autoplay settings are wonky, or poorly explained.:
And seeing same outcome.
Yes of course, didn't mean to get your hopes up
Just saying we can't help users who don't update. -
@Pathduck said in Autoplay settings are wonky, or poorly explained.:
the reality is no-one knows how it actually works or even if it works
i suspect you're only being humorous rather than serious here, but can i ask; is that intended as a global remark applicable to all browsers, or only restricted to chromium-based browsers? asking for a friend, who tells me her non-chromium browser, with some tweaked
about:config[whatever that means
] parameters, reliably blocks AP globally, & allows it locally on sites she wants. oh, she asked me to add; "allegedly". -
@ybjrepnfr
About:config is the "all settings page" for firefox.
I never really had this issue with firefox.. I just think, whatever manages Autoplay in FF, is better out of the box.. Also one of the reasons, it has been hard for me, to find another browser.. -
@timone from her
user.js, apparently:Spoiler
// Murgatroyd-Wilhelmina: 21/7/21: Definitively block Youtube & other media autoplaying [for several major FF versions now, the default settings have been mostly good, but YT still sometimes manages to defeat them... hence i'm now adding these, per https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/oof2j0/help_how_do_i_stop_youtube_videos_in_ff_9001_from/h5xzayi/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3]:
user_pref("media.autoplay.default", 5);
user_pref("media.autoplay.block-event.enabled", true);
user_pref("media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground", false);
user_pref("media.autoplay.allow-extension-background-pages", false);
user_pref("media.autoplay.blocking_policy", 2);
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@timone Wanted to come in to add that I was experiencing the same issue with Vivaldi disabling autoplay globally if you disabled it on one specific webpage in your privacy settings. Despite any current global settings.
I similarly resolved the issue by just deleting all of my webpage specific site settings. (which has to be done one at a time unfortunately). I could have resolved the issue by just finding whichever sites were interfering with global settings, but I figured the clean up was overdue.
Can confirm yuo're not crazy!
