Even though nobody asked for it, Facebook made it so videos play automatically, with the sound turned on, as you scroll by them in your News Feed. Luckily, a simple Chrome extension prevents that from happening — and it doesn’t just work on Facebook.
Facebook has been auto-playing videos for some time now, but until last week, the clips played silent until you clicked them. Now you get audio whether you want it or not, and it can be a pain if you use Facebook at work or just don’t want to hear every video you see.
A simple extension called Disable HTML5 Autoplay for Chrome and Opera — and coming soon to Firefox — stops those videos from playing automatically. They will still appear in your Facebook News Feed, but they won’t start unless you click on them.
There is a way to disable videos from playing automatically through Facebook itself. But what’s great about this extension is that it works on all HTML5 videos — not only on Facebook, but on other websites, too. That means those pesky ads you see (and hear) will be stopped, too.
What’s more, the extension is customizable, so if there are sites you want it to ignore, you can add them to a whitelist and their videos won’t be blocked.
Via: The Next Web
