This will only work when you launch Chrome through the shortcut, so be mindful to make a habit of opening your browser that way. You can disable it via a command line flag in your desktop shortcut icon, though. Google purposefully made it inaccessible within the browser. Here’s a frustrating bit of news Chrome does contain the ability to disable autoplay(sort of). Whenever you want to hear sound from a site, right click the tab for that page. Locate the toggle for Mute sites that play sound near the top of the page, and switch it on.

Scroll down to the Additional content settings, and select it.įrom the expanded Additional content settings, choose Sound.

Your tab will shift to display Chrome’s site settings. Under Privacy and security, choose Site Settings. Open the menu by selecting the three stacked dots in the upper right.įront the Settings tab, choose Privacy and security from the left side menu. It also forces you to manually unmute any sites you want to hear audio from. This will prevent the obnoxious audio playback from blaring through your speakers, but the videos will still play. Your first option for handling autoplay on Chrome is to mute all audio by default. There are two options for handling autoplay with Chrome, but neither is ideal. Google stripped out any option for disabling autoplay completely, and most extensions have spotty support at best.

Google Chrome may be the worst browser for navigating autoplay.

Here’s how you can turn video autoplay off in the following browsers: Usually there’s an ad associated with the video, so the site plays the video automatically to make sure you hear (and hopefully see) the ad. If you’ve been reading an article on a website and found yourself startled by audio playing when you didn’t expect it, you’ve encountered a site that has what’s called autoplay videos. Videos suddenly playing when you’re online? Turn that ‘feature’ off

Chrome autoplay video setting