Starting with Firefox 66 –scheduled for release on March 19, 2019 — Mozilla plans to block auto-playing audio on both desktop and mobile browsers.
Pam and I totally agree that auto-play is one of our biggest pet peeves when browsing the web. And if you’re one of those folks who browse the web at work, everyone around you instantly knows what you’re up to. The new Firefox rule will apply to any website that plays audio without user interaction in advance –such as a user clicking a button.
The audio auto-play ban will apply to both HTML5 audio and video elements used for media playback in modern browsers, meaning Firefox will block sound coming from both ads and video players, the most common sources of such abuse.
Mozilla’s move comes almost a year after Chrome took a similar decision to block all auto-playing sound by default with the release of Chrome 66 in April 2018. Chrome hit a few snags with older Flash-based games, but after a few modifications to its sound blocking procedure, the audio auto-play ban policy returned to Chrome last fall.
Mozilla similarly announced its plans to block auto-playing sound last July, and initially said the feature would launch in Firefox 63, before being delayed to v66, scheduled for release next month.
In a blog post yesterday, Firefox engineers are officially warning website developers to adapt their sites and apps to take into account the new ban.
On the user interface side, when Firefox 66 will access a web page with auto-playing sound –either from an audio or video element– they will see a new icon in the URL bar that tells them that sound has been blocked on the page.
Sites can be added to the sound auto-play block list at any point by clicking the “information” icon in the site’s URL bar, or by visiting the Firefox about:preferences#privacy section and editing the exceptions list. This option also lets users disable the sound auto-play policy altogether if they don’t mind auto-playing ads and videos.
Besides Chrome and Firefox, Microsoft announced similar plans to block auto-playing sounds in Edge, but the feature hasn’t made it to production.
Finally – peace and quiet when browsing the web – That’s a good thing!
