Not to notice it is practically impossible: with movies of all kinds that now clog up the bulletin boards of all users, you will surely have noticed that the video playback on Facebook starts automatically. It is one of the most criticized features of the social platform, even if the initial intentions are the best: to prevent users from having to press the “Play” button every time and thus improve their experience. In reality, users have never appreciated the functionality and have often tried to block automatic Facebook videos.
If you need help to disable the automatic start of videos on Facebook, you’ve come to the right site. In the following guide, I will explain, in a simple but at the same time detailed way, how to block videos in your News section using Wi-Fi or 3G, 4G or 4.5G mobile connection. It is a simpler operation than you can believe and it will take you very few minutes. In this way, you will not be forced to mute the volume on your smartphone when you’re in public and, above all, you will not end up consuming all the data traffic of your rate plan without you noticing it.
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How to block automatic Facebook videos
Before blocking Facebook automatic videos using iPhone, Android or PC, let’s take a few moments for an “operational” clarification. Unlike what you think, Facebook does not synchronize settings for automatically starting videos on various platforms.
This means that you will have to disable the automatic playback of movies on both browser and app: only in this way you can free yourself once and for all of this feature and start only the videos that interest you. However, do not worry: just follow my guide and you’re done.
Index
Android
If you want to block Facebook video autoplay on Android, you must first launch the app and enter your account credentials to login. Then, press the hamburger menu icon (the three horizontal lines that you find at the top right) and scroll down the list, until you find the item App Settings. Now look for and select the Account settings item, then tap Video and photos and, in the Video settings section, press Auto playback.
In case you want to permanently disable the Facebook video autoplay, choose Never play videos automatically. Instead, if your biggest concern is data traffic consumption, you may select Wi-Fi only.
However, it may be that the Facebook menu of your Android app is organized differently. Thus, the path I have just described could in fact be impassable. If you were in this situation, you could block Facebook automatic videos by entering the hamburger menu, opening the Settings and Privacy section and then choosing Settings. Here you will have to scroll through the menu to the end, where you will find the option Multimedia contents and contacts: when you view it, select it, press it on Automatic playback and then choose one of the options described above.
iOS
To block automatic Facebook videos on iOS, you can follow the same procedure described initially for Android. After launching the app and logging into your profile, enter the Settings you find in the hamburger menu (the three horizontal lines) and choose Account Settings.
In that section, you have to press on Video and photos and choose the Autoplay option, which can be found in the Video settings section. Then, you have to choose whether to play videos on Facebook only when you are connected via Wi-Fi or if you want to disable the automatic start of videos on Facebook in a definitive way.
Web
To block automatic Facebook videos from a PC, you have to follow a slightly different procedure. After logging in to your account, enter the Facebook Settings by clicking on the triangle icon with the vertex downwards that you find in the upper right corner.
In that section, once the interface is loaded, look for the Video entry in the left column (this is the last item in the menu) and click on it. At the Automatic video playback line, click the drop-down menu and choose Disable.
From now on, you will be able to browse your Facebook News section without being afraid that the audio of the automatically-played videos will overlap with that of the music you are listening to.