How To Stop Auto Play Videos and Audios In Firefox

No More Annoying
AutoPlay Videos!

Ever been enjoying a webinar, video or mp3 while surfing the web…
… found an interesting article and started opening links from it in new tabs for reading later…
… when suddenly BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH goes some noob over whatever you were listening to?
I HATE that!
I’m a multitasker at heart and even when I’m not I sometimes indulge in some music (I love music) and the last thing I want is something I opened in a tab to be blaring at me without permission.
I’m a big girl, if I want to hear them, I am perfectly capable of clicking on the play button thanks. (And in the case of auto-plays, the X close button on my browser.)
I tried using NoScript as a single solution but disabling all flash isn’t what I’m going for and the complicated white-list was not user-friendly.
When I’m doing blog syndication and commenting I may have as many as fifteen blogs open at a time… and trust me the one that autoplays is the one that the minute I can locate I close.
Fortunately, I’ve finally found a real easy to use, simple to set up, solution to putting an end to that nonesense!
Hurray for peace and quiet!
The Firefox Add-On is called “Stop Autoplay” and does exactly that.
You can find Stop Autoplay at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/stop-autoplay/

In the Firefox Add-Ons menu you will find Stop Autoplay listed and be able to easily adjust its settings.
From there if you click options you have a number of tabs where you can adjust preferences.

Here in the “General Media” tab you can select whether to block only the autostart or to block all embedded media from loading without being clicked. You can use either option for this use but you will likely have a preference.

Some people want to disapprove everything except flash on certain blacklist sites, or only disallow flash on certain sites, but since the blogs I surf are random, I leave this on defaults blocking all.

The whitelist is very easy to use and allows me to add URL keywords to not affect and by listing my (partial) domain name and Facebook’s domain name, I’m able to prevent it from affecting those sites. This is useful for Facebook as FB does not allow auto play media in the first place (for good reason!).
Assuming I had NOT whitelisted Facebook, here is an example for you.
This first image is what the video looks like before it has opened the player.
This image shows the video, after the player has been opened, blocked from autoplaying but easily able to be clicked on to remove the block and then authorized to play. This black box shows us there is media “missing” that we can easily enable. When you click on that box, it enables the media and you would be seeing the video as it would appear and able to click the play button to start it.

Have I mentioned I LOVE Firefox? (No, I don’t know if there is a chrome version of this, if you know of one please leave it in the comments.)
You can find Stop Autoplay at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/stop-autoplay/
There ya go! Now you too can surf in peace!
I really like how easy it is to whitelist a site with this and how it “just works” even right out of the box with no tinkering.
This probably will be a blessing to the site using autoplay as well since I am less likely to automatically close their site before having a look at whether they present valuable information. Win-Win!
Another one of my favorites is “Easy Comment” which helps speed up my commenting time on blogs!
I hope you’ll let me know your thoughts on auto play video, whether you think I’m a control freak on this topic, your favorite Firefox add-ons and if you find this one useful!
Kimberly Castleberry
Your Partner In Online Success
PS: Want an easy way to keep up with all the great tips and tricks I share as well as get additional cool stuff? Be sure to drop your name and email in the box below!