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Dear PC Doctor:
In Facebook, videos have started automatically playing on my newsfeed. It is extremely annoying. How do I make it stop? A lot of these videos I’d really rather not see.
Thank you, Judy
Dear Judy:
I know, right? What a pain. There are things you can do in almost any browser to disable this. Below are instructions for each of the most commonly used browsers.
Firefox
In Firefox, you can enable a feature called Click To Play that replaces Flash content with a static image that you have to click on before the media will load.
To enable it, type “about:config” into your URL bar, which should bring up a warning. After dismissing it, type ”plugins.click_to_play” into the search bar, then right-click on it and select ”Toggle.” Exit Firefox, then re-start it. After restarting Firefox, you should have to click “play” on the videos for them to play.
Chrome
To do the same thing in Chrome, type ”chrome://chrome/settings/content” into your address bar and find the ”Plug-ins” section. Now, all you have to do is select “Click to play.”
Internet Explorer
According to Microsoft's support page, you can use ActiveX filtering to prevent autoplay in IE. Just go to the “Tools” menu and select “Safety”, then enable ”ActiveX Filtering.” Now, when you visit a site with ActiveX content, you'll see a little blue icon in your address bar to let you know it's being blocked.
To play the blocked media, click on the icon. A menu will pop up, where you can turn off the filter for that site. Once you're done watching, you can turn it back on by clicking the icon again.
I hope this helps.
Until next time… Happy Computing!
PC Doctor
Posted: to Athol Library News on Fri, Jan 24, 2014
Updated: Fri, Jan 24, 2014