Auto-play video is encountered frequently when browsing the web, and many websites will start blasting you with video and sound as soon you load a webpage. This can be nice for some websites and videos, but it can also be frustrating or unwanted. A hidden setting in Safari makes disabling autoplay video to be pretty simple on the Mac, so if you would like to stop the autoplaying videos there is an option to do just that.
A quick important note: modern versions of Safari include a disable autoplay feature discussed here that is separate from what is detailed below. Additionally, in current versions of Safari (anything before High Sierra) if you choose to stop autoplay video then every video in Safari will require user interaction before it can be played. Typically this means you must click the video and then click the play button to start the video. All autoplaying videos will be stopped, but so is the ability to just easily press the play button to start any video – instead it will be a two-step play process required to play video. You can try out the setting below and see if it works for you, if not then it’s just as easy to disable and go back to the default options of allowing autoplay and inline video again.
How to Stop All Autoplaying Videos in Safari on Mac
By changing this setting which will stop autoplaying videos, all other videos in Safari will require user action before they can be played.
- Quit out of Safari on the Mac
- Open the Terminal app in MacOS as found in /Applications/Utilities/
- Enter the following syntax exactly, this enables the Debug menu in Safari:
- Hit the return key to execute the defaults command
- Open Safari on the Mac and pull down the newly enabled “Debug” menu and go to the “Media Flags” submenu, then choose “Disallow inline video”
- Reload / refresh any existing webpages to have the setting take effect
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1
You can try it yourself, load any webpage where a video would automatically play and it will no longer do so. For example, any random YouTube video or this page on Bloomberg.com would auto-play a video when they load, but with this setting enabled the video autoplay will stop in Safari without user action to allow that video to load and play.
Remember that when you disable “inline video” (and thus, auto-play video) you are actually stopping the ability for Safari to play any web video by default without user interaction. This means even YouTube videos and Vimeo videos will not load automatically until you click on them to play them. Some users may find this to too cumbersome to deal with and thus will want to re-enable inline video and auto-play video.
Re-Enable and Allow Inline Video & Video Autoplay in Safari on Mac
If you enabled the prior setting and find it to be too cumbersome to play other videos on the web, simply reverse the change by toggling the menu option again:
- In Safari, pull down the “Debug” menu and go back to the “Media Flags” submenu
- Choose “Disallow inline video” again so that it no longer has a checkbox next to it
- Refresh any existing open webpages for the change to carry over
Toggling the setting again will allow all web videos to play as usual without an additional step of user interaction, but will also re-allow auto-playing videos on webpages too.
* Safari 11 in macOS Sierra and MacOS High Sierra 10.13 onward includes an easier to access auto-play video disabling ability. Thus, this tip is most relevant to earlier versions of MacOS and earlier releases of Safari.
While hidden by default, the Safari debug menu has many useful options for web developers in particular, so if you’re a web worker in any variety, be it a front end designer, web developer, or even just a programmer or tinkerer, you may find it useful and fun to play around with. Many of the optional settings in the Debug menu are very advanced and it’s certainly not intended for casual use, and be aware that if you enable the menu and start toggling various switches you may prevent Safari from working as intended. Thus you’ll want to stick to options in the Debug menu that are explained or that are relevant to you, don’t start randomly trying things out (well, at least without tracking what they are so you can reverse the setting if need be).
Do you have any additional tips or tricks on auto-playing videos in Safari on the Mac? Let us know in the comments!
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