Mozilla adds autoplay sound blocking to Firefox Nightly

Mozilla has added a capability to the Nightly build of Firefox that allows users to block sound automatically played by videos on sites. Other browsers already offer this feature. Mozilla also started a test with WebRender.

Firefox developer Dale Harvey announces that the feature was added to the Nightly build. He describes it as a way to configure auto-playing videos with sound. A video published by the developer shows that in the browser’s options, users can choose to turn on autoplay, block it, or have Firefox keep asking you to apply one of these options. Users can also define exceptions. Browsers Chrome and Edge already make use of such an option.

In addition to adding the autoplay feature, which will likely be included in the stable version of version 63 of the browser in the future, Mozilla started testing WebRender last week. According to developer Sören Hentschel, the renderer is written in Rust and should provide performance improvements when rendering site content. Hentschel writes that WebRender should make more use of the GPU. The current test, in the form of a Shield Study, takes place among Firefox Nightly users with Windows 10 and an Nvidia GPU.