PSA: Google Chrome Now Lets You Permanently Mute Websites That Autoplay Videos (independent.co.uk) 89
Google is releasing a new version of Chrome this week and it includes a number of new features, such as an improved ad blocker and Spectre mitigations. The best new feature in Chrome 64 is the ability to permanently mute websites that autoplay videos. This feature was teased for several months, but now it's finally here. The Independent reports: To mute a site that automatically plays videos, users will need click the View Site Information symbol, which may look like a green padlock, on the left-hand edge of the omnibar -- the address bar combined with the Google search box. Then they will need to select Sound. Once the website is muted, it will not automatically play videos with sound again until you unmute it.
Autoplay whitelist (Score:5, Insightful)
How about Google disable autoplay by default and allow us to whitelist sites that we want to allow autoplay on? Give control back to the users. Oh right, users are the product, and Google is focused on their customers (advertisers).
Re: (Score:1)
Right, because the world fell over when popups where blocked automatically by default by browser.
Is it beyond your imagination that Chrome could show a message/icon the first time it blocks an autoplay video to teach Joe A. User how to use the feature?
Re: Autoplay whitelist (Score:2, Insightful)
The fuck?
You are defending autoplay videos... You either work for Google, Facebook, or are a complete fucking moron.
Re: (Score:3)
You either work for Google, Facebook...
Or CNN. Damn it, if I'm browsing the news I'm either listening to music or at work. If I want to start a video, I'd like to make that decision. If I wanted to watch a broadcast, I'd be in front of a TV. I like Anderson Cooper and Jerry Garcia, but not at the same time.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. This solution is nice if there's a few websites that you visit regularly that are so afflicted, but does nothing for random annoying embedded ads, etc. scattered across the net. Personally, any website that autoplays videos on a regular basis just stops getting visited.
Of course, it might be best to set that as a config option so Joe Average doesn't get confused by it.
Re:Autoplay whitelist (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. This solution is nice if there's a few websites that you visit regularly that are so afflicted
And this story pops up right next to one about CNN...
Fuck autoplay video at the top of every page, and double fuck turning it into a tiny sidebar video and restarting it after you scroll past it.
Re: (Score:1)
and double fuck turning it into a tiny sidebar video and restarting it after you scroll past it.
This may be the most annoying "feature" of auto-play videos. Whoever came up with this idea should be drawn and quartered.
Re: (Score:1)
and double fuck turning it into a tiny sidebar video and restarting it after you scroll past it.
This may be the most annoying "feature" of auto-play videos. Whoever came up with this idea should be drawn and quartered.
And it should be public. I want to see this bastard suffer.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm alright with auto play, but I feel audio should be a permission.
Re:Autoplay whitelist (Score:4, Insightful)
Mute? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about not loading the videos, period? Why waste my bandwidth for something I don't want to see in the first place?
Videos should be like Flash: click to play.
GIF would be even worse (Score:5, Informative)
Google's rationale behind allowing muted autoplaying video [google.com] is that if the video fails to load, playback is likely to fall back to a GIF animation, which uses your bandwidth even less efficiently:
Re:GIF would be even worse (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Google's rationale behind allowing muted autoplaying video [google.com] is that if the video fails to load, playback is likely to fall back to a GIF animation, which uses your bandwidth even less efficiently:"
Which is why browsers like Firefox ALSO allow the user to disable playback of animated GIFs. Perhaps that should be an option in Chrome....
Re: (Score:2)
It's difficult to reliably identify JavaScript hacks that would need disabling
I don't see how it's so hard:
1. The <script> element
2. Attributes whose name begins with on
Re: (Score:3)
>"It's difficult to reliably identify JavaScript hacks that would need disabling"
To disable animated GIF? That doesn't require identifying Javascript at all. The code that displays animated GIF (or animated PNG) just needs to look at a user option. Easy as pie and something Firefox has offered for many, many years. The user specifies the setting as something like:
1) Yes- then it plays all cells normally, which is almost always a loop.
2) Once- then it plays through once and stops.
2) Disable- then it d
Implementing motion JPEG in CSS or JS (Score:3)
I think Anonymous Coward #56004133's point is that just setting image.animation_mode to once would not stop animation driven by CSS or JavaScript that arranges the frames of an animation as CSS sprites [mozilla.org].
Re: (Score:2)
>"I think Anonymous Coward #56004133's point is that just setting image.animation_mode to once would not stop animation driven by CSS or JavaScript that arranges the frames of an animation as CSS sprites [mozilla.org]."
That is true, and yet another problem that has to be addressed somehow. Unnecessary animation is the bane of modern sites.
Re: (Score:2)
Disable PLAYBACK of animated GIF, but it still loads them entirely. The problem is that to even know it's an animated GIF and not just a normal static GIF you have to start loading it... And with the canvas hack you have to try to figure out if some random bit of Javascript is repeatedly loading images into the same space rapidly.
The only sane option is a uBlock rule that nukes the whole thing.
Re: (Score:2)
couldnt you drop/reset connection as soon as you download/decode enough of GIF header?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, but the problem is evil web developers will notice this and add Javascript to load some other crap.
Blacklists are the only really effective measure we have, and companies don't want to get into curating blacklists by hand.
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox does this to stop bogging down the browser playing many GIFs at a time. It still loads downloads them completely in the background.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Firefox does this to stop bogging down the browser playing many GIFs at a time. It still loads downloads them completely in the background."
That is true. So it will stop most of the CPU/battery waste, and all of the annoyance and frustration, but will not help with bandwidth.
Re:Mute? (Score:5, Insightful)
>How about not loading the videos, period?
+100
Muting videos is nowhere near enough... it is a great start, but not a finish. Many people want that NO videos should ever play unless the user specifically requests it by clicking on something. THAT should be a user choice. Muted videos still chew through bandwidth and CPU and batteries. But most importantly, they are extremely annoying and distracting. And many sites now even force the damn things to FOLLOW the user while they are trying to read an article!
Re: (Score:3)
But most importantly, they are extremely annoying and distracting. And many sites now even force the damn things to FOLLOW the user while they are trying to read an article!
You'd think after the pop-up/under/etc bullshit, that sites would realize that there's some stuff that will actually drive users away from your site. But nope! There's always someone that thinks it's the hottest, trendiest, newest and greatest thing since web2.0(or whatever it is now), and everyone has to do it!
It's like it won't cause people to use adblockers if the ad's start screaming at you or something...
Re:Mute? (Score:4, Interesting)
The cynic in me says that Google is taking money from someone to leave autoplay enabled. Whomever at W3C dreamt that "feature" up should be tarred and feathered.
Re:Mute? (Score:4, Informative)
>"The cynic in me says that Google is taking money from someone to leave autoplay enabled."
Agreed. It does make you wonder....
Now, keep in mind that disabling autoplay completely is actually pretty tricky. Firefox has been working on it, but it keeps breaking certain sites or having unintended actions. The muting part is easy. But we need a REAL fix that gives users full control.
Searching, I found these:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The only solutions to this are all somewhat undesirable. As Google point out, the problem is that asshat web devs will try to circumvent anything you do. If you disable HTML5 video, they will load a backup animated GIF that pisses away even more bandwidth.
Delayed loading might be the best option. When background tabs are opened and auto-play video is detected, just freeze them until the user actually switches to that tab. At least that way they don't start making noise in the background and wasting bandwidt
Re: (Score:2)
Disabling animated GIFs is no harder than disabling video. Just don't start playback until the user clicks.
And then the abusers move on to a giant image with sprite animation, but to get a big enough size, the image is huge, so you detect ridiculously large resources and add a placeholder so that the user has to click on the image to make it load. With the image offscreen, the user can't click on it, so it never gets loaded.
And then the abusers move on, fetching each frame as a separate image, and you ma
Re:Mute? (Score:5, Interesting)
Give each page load a data cap (Score:2)
I suggested another solution a year and a half ago in a comment to someone's anti-adblock blog [disq.us]. Give each page load a data cap configurable per domain and defaulting to 1,000,000 bytes. Once a particular page load has reached the quota, pause all connections and display a "runaway download" notice similar to that for an unresponsive script. The user can reset the cap by clicking "Load More" in the notice or by navigating to another document.
I now realize that this naive model of a cap per document would bre
Re: (Score:2)
>the browser should let the user define a quota per hour, minute, or user gesture.
You need that 3-D recognition stuff to recognize the "user gesture" that occurs when some idiot site reloads while we try to read . . . :)
hawk
Click-to-run (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Click-to-run (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Because then advertisers would fall back to using hacks and gifs rather than video."
And then you disallow animated GIF and PNG (like Firefox allows with user control) and then endlessly running scripts. Yes, it is a war, but one that needs to be fought.
Re: (Score:2)
What would be better, IMO.... (Score:2)
For background audio, subscribe to Chrome Red (Score:2)
Switch away from the Spotify, Pandora, Amazon, SoundCloud, or YouTube tab playing music, and it gets paused. How would that benefit users? YouTube on mobile already has that "feature" to pause when visibility is lost and puts the disable switch behind a recurring paywall.
I'd prefer to be able to temporarily unmute (Score:5, Informative)
I tried this out on CNN. It works, but if I want to hear a video, I have to choose "always allow this site to play audio". It's a bit too fidgety for my liking, but better than nothing.
My number one reason for not using Chrome (Score:1)
I use FF with an extension to mute all tabs. Only on demand it will unmute. Until this simple interface is implemented, Chrome is out for me.
Big Feature! (Score:5, Informative)
I can see why that feature needed a several month cycle to get into Chrome. I mean, can you imagine the difficulty of implementing and testing that feature.
Of course, not autoplaying video was a rule for like 20 years, and had the added benefit of loading faster, less bandwidth, and just as many clicks to watch the video.
Re:Big Feature! (Score:4, Informative)
>"Of course, not autoplaying video was a rule for like 20 years, and had the added benefit of loading faster, less bandwidth, and just as many clicks to watch the video."
Bingo. It is not like ANY USER really wants to autoplay ANY video- muted or not. As if a single click on "play" or on the video container is too much effort. The only reason for autoplay existing is for web sites to further shove annoying S*** down the throats of the users. It is a huge step backwards.
Youtube? (Score:2)
Will it stop Youtube videos from autoplaying? I tend to have a bunch of tabs open at once and if I have to restart my browser (say, for an update...) its a horrid cacophony until I either wait them all out or manually switch to each video and pause it. Somewhere around 3/4 of the addons I use are there specifically to stop Youtube from being so obnoxiously in your face (and the other 1/4 are mostly to stop other videos/scripts/bullshit from auto-running as much as possible.)
Isn't there something easier? (Score:2)
There must be an easier way to not hear videos which autoplay. Something like a mute option which could be easily accessed from the desktop.
Perhaps, and I'm just spitballing here, maybe if one's speakers could somehow be turned off so no sound could emanate from them. It would be up to the discretion of the user to turn the speakers on when they wanted.
*sigh* I guess we'll have to deal with this complexity since there isn't a simpler method to not hear audio.
Autoplay while listening to Spotify (Score:2)
Your suggestion to use an OS-level or hardware-level mute feature may work for some people. But it won't work for people who want to hear sound from one app but not from another app, or sound from a document open in one tab but not from a document open in another tab.
Re: (Score:2)
Sarcasm isn't your strong suit, is it?
Don't plug in speakers to your computer. (Score:2)
I find that is 100% effective in not hearing things I don't want to hear.
Re: (Score:2)
You've never multi-tasked? Listened to music while working, only to have your tunes disrupted by some autoplay
Can I pay for a browser I control? (Score:2)
I am willing to buy a premium or upgraded or platinum edition or whatever the name the marketing comes up with. It should give me better control over video feed. No video, no animated gif, no auto play anything, do not allow the video to relocate itself to defeat scrolling past it...
almost but not quite (Score:2)
The real fucking annoying problem (Score:2)
You Can Already Mute Individual Tabs (Score:2)
Why not just open news (or whatever) sites in a new tab, mute the tab (context menu on the tab -> mute tab), then view when ready? Videos don't start playing in a tab until it's activated, so you don't run the risk of hearing anything until you first give focus to the tab, offering plenty of time to mute it. You can always just unmute the tab if you want to hear a specific video (you can also stop/mute any other unwanted videos on the site before you unmute the tab at your leisure).
Really, this approach