We’ve all come across those sites that load up and begin auto-playing a video at some obnoxiously loud volume. Over time, Google has been trying to tackle this with various Chrome updates. Back in January Google pushed out a Chrome update that allowed users to permanently mute certain websites, but the next update will block autoplaying videos entirely in an effort to curb the practice.

With the next update, Chrome will only autoplay video content if the sound is muted by default. If not, then the content won’t play at all until a user specifically clicks on it. Originally, this was due to arrive as part of the Chrome 64 update in January, but it was delayed a bit. Now it will be arriving in the Chrome 66 update instead.

Google is dubbing this as ‘unified autoplay’. This means users won’t need to encounter unnecessary noise or data usage while browsing and gives them greater control to only play the content they are actually interested in seeing or hearing.

This particular update is currently in Chrome's public beta channel and should start rolling out to all users soon.

KitGuru Says: There are several sites that I use regularly that insist on autoplaying videos with sound, so I'm glad to see Google taking a stand against it. Do you guys often run into this problem? 

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