Only a few weeks ago, Google announced that it’s ready to automatically block automatically playing video content. Those are so annoying, am I right? However, it turned out that the Chrome tool didn’t “just work,” as videos kept auto-playing on various sites, YouTube included. Apparently, that was because Google would interpret your habits from your browsing history, and determine which sites you wouldn’t want to be muted.
Google isn’t done fixing Chrome’s video autoplay feature, and it rolled out a new update.
Google announced the changes in a blog post. You’ll have to let Chrome learn what kind of videos you’d like Chrome to play the minute the site is loaded. The browser will do that by exploring your browsing history and/or habits. From Google’s announcement:
If you don’t have browsing history, Chrome allows autoplay for over 1,000 sites where we see that the highest percentage of visitors play media with sound. As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites where you don’t. This way, Chrome gives you a personalized, predictable browsing experience.
As you teach Chrome, you may find that you need to click “play” every now and then, but overall the new policy blocks about half of unwanted autoplays, so you will have fewer surprises and less unwanted noise when you first arrive at a website. The policy is enabled in the latest version of Chrome—update today and try it out.
The Chrome update should be available already so you can try the new autoplay muting policy right away.
