Google Chrome starts blocking unwanted autoplay videos

In April, Google started to roll out a brand new version of Chrome that addressed autoplay videos. Chrome version 66 came with autoplay video changes that prevented Chrome from playing videos automatically if the sound was on by default. Google has been rolling out the changes in personalized ways.

The reason is that Chrome can learn user preferences by which websites should or shouldn’t be blocked. All this would prevent audio from blasting from users’ speakers when they least expect it. The changes involve the fact that after you clicked and played videos on a website in the past, Chrome will remember the preferences in the future.

Google reveals a new policy for blocking autoplays

Now, Google announced a brand new policy on its desktop for blocking unwanted autoplay videos. Chrome will initially allow the autoplay feature for more than 1,000 websites where the highest percentage of visitors usually pay media with sound. Based on the users’ browsing preferences and habits, Chrome will steadily learn and enable autoplay only on websites where users play media with sound during most of their visits and it will disable it on websites where they don’t.

Chrome will gradually learn your preferences

Here’s what Google product manager John Pallett said about these changes:

As you browse the web, that list changes as Chrome learns and enables autoplay on sites where you play media with sound during most of your visits, and disables it on sites where you don’t. […] As you teach Chrome, you may find that you need to click ‘play’ every now and then, but overall the new policy blocks about half of unwanted autoplays, so you will have fewer surprises and less unwanted noise when you first arrive at a website.

On the other hand, it will take a while until the Chrome browser will completely understand users’ preferences and until it does, users may have to click play once in a while. But, according to Google, this latest policy of theirs will be able to block at least half of the unwanted autoplay videos. This policy has been already made live in the last version of Chrome.

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