aNewDomain — From time to time, for reasons few can fathom, Twitter and Facebook will surreptitiously turn on video autoplay in news feeds. This happens even if you specifically instruct those social networks not to automatically play videos.
Video autoplay isn’t just annoying. It can be quite embarrassing, too. So I came up with a short guide for you. Here’s how to turn off video autoplay on Twitter and Facebook. Thank me the next time it happens to you
How To Turn Off Video Autoplay in Twitter
To turn of video autoplay in Twitter, open Twitter in your browser and click your avatar icon in the upper right-hand corner. My icon is Gossamer, as you see below.
First, select the Settings menu item to get to the Settings page.
Now scroll down until you see the Video Tweets section. Make sure Video autoplay is unchecked. And that’s it. I told you it was simple.
How To Turn off Video Autoplay in Facebook
To turn off video autoplay in Facebook, just open Facebook in your browser. Click the down arrow in the upper right corner to reveal the various menu items, as you see below. Select Settings.
On the left side of the Settings screen, click Videos. This will bring you to Video Settings. Now turn the Auto-Play Videos setting to off.
Annoyances
It’s not difficult to turn off the video autoplay after it has mysteriously been turned on. Twitter and Facebook likely will turn back on the feature after you set them. There’s nothing you can do about that, unfortunately. It’s just another annoyance that comes from using free, ad-supported services. When it happens, just go back to Twitter and Facebook and turn off the video autoplay option again.
If I could write a “How To Stop Facebook And Twitter from Turning It Back On,” I would. But, alas …
For aNewDomain, I’m Mark Kaelin.
All screenshots: Mark Kaelin
Featured image: Still from A Confidence of Vertices by Brandon Morse via Flickr
