How to Stop Autoplay Videos on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera

Hi! This post will show you how to stop autoplay video on chrome, firefox, safari and opera browser. Auto play videos suck and unfortunately they are all over web. It's pretty hard to miss them! They steal your internet bandwidth and annoys to no end. And then there's this music too. If you use latest web browsers then they are fully equipped to block flash-based videos by themselves. But websites these days uses HTML5 to play videos and media. And they'll automatically start playing once the page loads.

Luckily you can stop autoplaying videos no matter its Flash or HTML5. Here I have shared some of the methods you can use to stop video autoplay on various browsers like chrome, firefox, opera and safari.

1. Stop Video Autoplay on Chrome

Chrome ships with built-in support to stop auto playing flash videos. But there are complaints about them not working. So if you have such issues then I recommend you to use a chrome extension. Just go to chrome store, download and install flashcontrol extension. Once installed it will automatically stop flash videos from playing.

The extension will simply disable flash on chrome. At any time you can easily enable flash by changing the settings.

To do so right click on the extension and choose 'Allow flash plugins on this site' or any other option you prefer.

If you notice the extension will work only for flash videos. HTML5 videos will still be playing automatically on chrome.

To stop HTML5 video auto-play get this extension instead. Once enabled, chrome will load HTML5 video but won't play it automatically. It's your call to watch it or not.

2. Stop Video Autoplay on Firefox

With Firefox you don't need plugins to stop autoplaying video at start. You can just do it right in the browser settings itself.

To stop flash video auto play in firefox, open firefox, go to 'Tools' > 'Add-ons' or simply hit the hotkey 'Ctrl+Shift+A'.

Navigate to 'Plugins' section and look for 'Shockwave Flash'. By default the dropdown besides the plug-in will show 'Always Activate', means it's enabled.

To disable Flash in Firefox choose 'Ask to Activate' option from the dropdown. This will prevent flash videos from auto-playing.

Next we have to stop HTML5 videos.

To stop autoplaying HTML5 video in firefox, enter 'about:config' in the address bar and click on "I'll be careful, I promise" button.

Now search for the option 'media.autoplay.enabled'. Once you find it double-click on it to turn it off. Else you can simply right-click click and choose 'Toggle' option. This will disable auto play.

From now on HTML5 video won't play automatically anymore on loading.

The only downside to this method is it will also prevent vimeo videos from playing. As a Vimeo user I find it annoying but guess it wouldn't be a problem to others.

Flashstoper Plugin for Firefox

If you don't bother using one more plugin, I recommend get flashstopper plugin for firefox. It will stop both flash and html5 video auto play on firefox but will not get in the way of Vimeo playback.

3. Stop Video Autoplay on Safari

If you use Mac, then there's good workaround to disable playing videos automatically in Safari. 'ClickToPlugin' tends to work earlier but seems it no longer get updates. So we have to go for other method.

First you need to turn on Safari Debug menu. For that open Terminal and type the below lines into it, hit Return and wait for couple of seconds.

defaults write com.apple.Safari
IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

Using option '1' will enable Debug menu in safari browser. Later you can turn off Debug menu by using option '0' like this,

defaults write com.apple.Safari
IncludeInternalDebugMenu 0

But for now you just enable Debug menu so that we can stop auto play videos.

Now quit Terminal and open Safari browser. Find Debug menu and select 'Media Flags' > 'Disallow Inline Video' option (You can also try 'Video Needs User Action' if this raise issues but both options has little difference).

That's it! It will prevent autoplaying videos/audio in safari.

4. Stop Autoplay Video in Opera

And here's the method to turn off autoplay videos in opera browser. It's really very simple. You have to download and install Disable HTML5 Autoplay extension for opera. Once installed you don't have to worry about autoplaying videos anymore.

Enable Gmail Desktop Notifications in Firefox

This post will show you how to enable gmail desktop notifications in firefox browser. People completely rely on emails these days and Gmail has been their ever popular choice. But who has time to login and check inbox for new mails every so often on a busy workday?

Don't worry! Now you can get popup notifications on your desktop whenever you receive new emails. And that too without opening your Gmail account at all. Convenient isn't it?

Enabling Gmail Notifications on Desktop:

Gmail provides desktop notifications for their Chrome browser by default and you can enable this option via Gmail settings. But if you are using Firefox as your default browser then your chances are slim with this method.

But Firefox users don't have to worry because there are some good plugins available out there. Installing such extension will allow you to enable Gmail notifications in Firefox and you'd be able to get email alerts without logging in to your Gmail account.

Enable Gmail Desktop Notifications in Firefox:

Trusting third-party plug-in makes you uncomfortable these days and there's a pretty good reason for that. But the plug-in 'Gmail Notifier' is quite popular among firefox users and seemed to won people's trust which itself speaks for its credibility.

You can use this extension to enable gmail notifications on desktop. To install this plugin, visit here, download and install the plugin.

Alternatively you can directly install it from firefox browser itself.

Open Firefox, go to Tools » Add-ons » Extensions. And type 'gmail notifier' on the search box and hit enter. This will bring up all the addons related your search. Look for 'Gmail Notifier' and click 'Install' and follow the procedure.

Key Features of Gmail Notifier:

• Supports multiple Gmail accounts & labels
• No need to provide your account credentials
• Highly customizable browser add-on
• Consumes low-bandwidth
• Available for Firefox, Opera, Chrome & Safari browsers

After installing the plugin, to enable desktop notification for gmail you have to just login to your gmail account through gmail interface. Now the extension will automatically grabs your account details and start showing email alerts on the taskbar notification area like this,

Must Read: How to Minimize Chrome to System Tray

Likewise you can enable gmail desktop notifications in firefox. There are no security complaints with this method so you can rest and let it do the work.

How to Change Zoom in Firefox for Android (ZOOM IN/OUT)

Want to change zoom level in Firefox for Android? Feel like the text is too small for you to read on mobile or tablet? Then firefox for android let you zoom in and zoom out of the web page with some simple gestures.

I have already discussed about changing zoom level in firefox desktop and in this post I'll show you the different options you have to zoom in and out of the web page in firefox android.

How to Change Default Zoom in Firefox Browser

This post discusses about how to change default zoom in Firefox browser. Firefox default zoom level is 100% i.e., WebPages are scaled at 1:1 ratio. But at times you may visit websites which are too large for your screen resolution or uses text that are too small to read. In such cases you may need to ZOOM IN/OUT to make it easy on the eyes. Earlier browsers zooms only text but modern web browsers now zooms the entire page elements.

You can change Firefox default zoom level in three ways. Just follow any one of the below given methods to change the default zoom level of Mozilla Firefox web browser.

Change Default Zoom in Firefox Browser

Method 1: Use Menu Buttons

This method is quite easy and all you have to do is to just click on the menu button on the top-right corner of the toolbar and look for the + 100% - buttons on the same row. Click + (plus) sign to zoom in (increase zoom level), - (minus) sign to zoom out (decrease zoom level) and 100% to reset the zoom settings to default level.

• + for Zoom In
• - for Zoom Out
• 100% for Reset Zoom to default

Method 2: Use Keyboard Shortcuts

In the second method you can use hotkeys to change Firefox zoom settings. In Windows, press Ctrl and + sign to zoom in, Ctrl and - sign to zoom out and Ctrl and 0 key to reset zoom.

For Mac OS, the shortcut is same except you have to hold down Cmd key instead of Ctrl key.

• Cmd plus + key - Zoom In
• Cmd plus - key - Zoom Out
• Cmd plus 0 key - Reset

For +, - & 0 you can either use the keys provided on the main left side or the numeric keypad. Both will work.

Method 3: Use Mouse Wheel

The third method is even easier. Just hold down the Ctrl key and scroll the mouse wheel up or down to zoom in/out the webpage. If you are Mac user, use Cmd button along with mouse wheel.

Likewise, you can easily change the default zoom in Firefox by using anyone of the above method.

If you work on chrome browser then check for articles to learn how to show hidden button for chrome extension and minimize chrome to system tray.

Firefox remembers zoom settings at website level which is quite smartest. That means a zoom setting applied for a website will affect only that particular site and other websites won't share that zoom settings.