Firefox 66 to block automatically playing audible video and audio - Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog

Isn’t it annoying when you click on a link or open a new browser tab and audible video or audio starts playing automatically?

We know that unsolicited volume can be a great source of distraction and frustration for users of the web. So we are making changes to how Firefox handles playing media with sound. We want to make sure web developers are aware of this new autoplay blocking feature in Firefox.

Starting with the release of Firefox 66 for desktop and Firefox for Android, Firefox will block audible audio and video by default. We only allow a site to play audio or video aloud via the HTMLMediaElement API once a web page has had user interaction to initiate the audio, such as the user clicking on a “play” button.

Any playback that happens before the user has interacted with a page via a mouse click, printable key press, or touch event, is deemed to be autoplay and will be blocked if it is potentially audible.

Muted autoplay is still allowed. So script can set the “muted” attribute on HTMLMediaElement to true, and autoplay will work.

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