Autoplay youtube with sound

I know that many newer browsers now disable autoplay when the video isn't muted or mute it and then play. Without user interaction it's also not possible to call play on a video. That's understandable, but I'm wondering how youtube is still able to start the videos with sound.

I checked and they do use the video tag, just not with any autoplay/muted attributes and loading some blob. It's not the user interaction opening the video, it also starts when opening a link in incognito mode.

So my conclusion, it should still be possible. But how? Or did browsers add some kind of exception for trusted video streaming sites?

Thanks in advance

The update that is listed as 2 hours ago introduced sound to the Autoplay on Home preview of videos in the "Home" tab. I for one don't like this. What tips me into absolutely despising this change is that on the Autoplay on Home setting they have no way to mute sound or play just the video without the audio. What ticks me off further, is that the options for Autoplay on Home say, "Videos play with sound off as you browse Home feed." and, "On Wi-Fi only, videos play with sound off as you browse Home feed." Neither of these options play Autoplay on Home with sound off and there is no alternative.

I liked the Autoplay on Home feature, but I really don't like sound as I'm trying to get a judge of what the video will contain. I'm not trying to watch the video yet. I also liked the captions on the Autoplay on Home previews.

Please give us the option to turn on only-video/no-audio Autoplay on Home preview. And please update your settings if you meant to add this because you have ruined one of my favorite features of the YouTube app.

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

YouTube on Monday announced a significant change to its mobile app — it will now autoplay videos by default when users are browsing the app’s home page, aka the “Home” tab. Fortunately, the videos will not autoplay with the sound enabled, the company says. Instead, the feature is meant to give users a preview of the video while scrolling through the Home section, so they can better decide if it’s something they want to watch.

The feature, which YouTube calls “Autoplay on Home,” is enabled by default. However, the app will introduce settings that will allow users to control their experience. Users can opt to turn the feature off entirely, if they choose, or they can opt to have autoplay only enabled when they’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Autoplay for Home is not an entirely new feature. It’s actually been up-and-running for over half a year for YouTube Premium members on Android. Premium is YouTube’s subscription offering, which removes the ads from YouTube while also offering other perks like downloads for offline access to videos, background play and access to YouTube Music and YouTube Originals.

Starting this week, Autoplay on Home is rolling out beyond Premium subscribers to all those who use the YouTube app on iOS and Android. As with most launches across YouTube, it’s a staged rollout — meaning you may not see autoplay immediately. YouTube says it will take a few weeks for the rollout to complete.

The company notes it made the decision to expand autoplay because it increases users’ engagement time with videos.

As YouTube explains in an announcement on its product forum [spotted first by Tubefilter]: “previewing videos helps you make more informed decisions about whether you want to watch a video, leading to longer engagement with videos you choose to watch.”

The company also detailed its decision further in a YouTube Help video [embedded below] where it noted that autoplay’s launch doesn’t mean thumbnails are going away. Instead, YouTube will display the thumbnail first during a brief pause before the video begins to autoplay.

With the launch of autoplay, YouTube also noted that captions would become more important.

Today, the number of videos with captions enabled tops 2 billion, it said. The site offers a variety of options for captions, including automated captions [which aren’t always perfect], creator-uploaded captions and crowdsourced community captions.

It’s not surprising to see YouTube adopt autoplay, given that rivals, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others already do the same, as do some streaming services, like Netflix.

User reaction, following YouTube’s announcement on Twitter, has been mixed. Some people said they were looking forward to the feature, while others lamented that it’s now just another setting they have to turn off.

Earlier this week, Youtube made an odd, but interesting choice that I initially got excited about. It added autoplay videos to its homepage across virtually all platforms including Android and Chromecast with Google TV. I initially held off from writing up my thoughts on the matter because I understand that most people detest this type of implementation for video platforms, and instead, sought to understand their position.

Netflix has done this for as long as I can recall, and it certainly adds an air of authenticity to the moviegoing experience at home. It gives the feel of being in the theater, and the cinematic quality of getting a quick preview of a TV show or movie while you browse listings. For this reason, I’ve endorsed the decision in the past when it was added to Youtube TV.

However, now that I’ve used it for several days via Youtube, I have a few thoughts that contradict my initial reactions. First, I don’t hate autoplay videos as much as others do. I don’t have an adverse reaction to the feature as a whole, and I don’t reject the idea of it being useful or immersive. I do believe that it makes Youtube more difficult to pursue though. Let me explain.

While browsing the homepage, I was constantly aware that the video would soon autoplay. There’s about a five second delay before it begins firing off the audio and the thumbnail turns into moving chaos. Why do I say chaos? Well, when you’re considering whether or not you want to watch a video, you’re busy looking at the thumbnail and reading the title, and the moment that video begins playing, it causes your entire thought process and consideration to shatter into a million pieces.

I found myself constantly rushing to read titles, digest what was happening in the thumbnail, and deciding whether or not something was of interest to me. I don’t like to be rushed – period. Autoplay videos forced me to mentally rush through my decision-making process, and I hate that more than I could express. I watch Youtube to relax and unwind from my day since it normally includes time-restricted efforts that are high-pressure and require loads of research.

I believe that autoplay videos are great for longer form content like movies and even TV shows, but Youtube is a different story entirely. I suppose this would depend on the person you ask and their subscription and content focus on the platform, but I generally visit Youtube for informational and educational purposes, and even though many of the videos I watch are between 15 and 30 minutes long on average, they’re still informational at their core. Sure, they’re often entertaining since the Youtuber does their best to make them engaging, but that’s different than when something is entertaining in the sense of fictional storytelling as you see in content that Netflix and other platforms provide.

It’s difficult to accurately describe, but the decision to turn on autoplay videos by default is just a bad one, in my opinion. I stand by the fact that when Youtube TV added them it made movie night feel more family-oriented and immersive, but Youtube following suit feels shortsighted. Luckily, you can turn this feature off by visiting Settings > Previews with sound > off, and I highly recommend you do so if you’re not feeling it. I, on the other hand, will probably experiment with them on and off and get a better sense of what Youtube can do to fix the experience instead of cutting it out entirely.

Sometimes, a thumbnail and a title simply aren’t enough to give you a proper sense of what the content will be about or whether it will be valuable enough to you to click and consume, but the issue with Youtube is that most content creators front-load their videos with all of the self-promotional bits like liking the video, subscribing to their channel, Patreon, and so on, and even talking about things that are completely unrelated to the topic of the video since their audience is acquainted with them and wants updates on their life.

When nearly all of the videos autoplay this segment, it can not only be extremely distracting to the process of selecting something to watch, but downright annoying. Anyways, those are my thoughts on the matter, but I want to hear from you all in the comments section. Did you already toggle off these autoplay previews with sound, or are you trying them on for size before you cut them out?