Desktop Firefox will block autoplay videos with sound from next month

Mozilla will provide its Firefox browser with a standard block for autoplaying videos with sound from the next stable version. Users can enable this themselves in the site settings.

Autoplay is blocked from version 66, which should be released on March 19, Mozilla said. Developers can still program sites to autoplay videos without sound with the muted addition to HTMLMediaElement. Users can also indicate in the tab that they always want to allow the site to start videos.

By default, users must first press a Play button before a video starts playing. Firefox for desktop will do that, while the Android version will also get an update to implement the feature in the same way. The Android version already has a block for autoplay, but it works differently. In recent years, many browsers have built in a feature to block autoplay videos. Chrome and Safari, among others, already did that.