Please Fix This I have been unabel to let my videos play by themself its annoying to click every time 

Can use other browser fine! Thank you for sending me bug

I usually open over 50 YouTube tabs when I'm in a rush to finish my subscription's videos. It worked in chrome 64 when I set the flag to something like gesture required but when I updated to chrome 65 it just outright ignores that flag. It's nothing when 10 tabs started playing when you Ctrl + Page Up/Down through them but it IS a big problem when you have over 50 tabs open.

It's detrimental to my youtube red subscription. I don't like paying for something that developers make blocking bugs for. I would like to open stuff without engaging in the tab since I'm using AND paying for this as a music service that's tightly integrated with my browser. 

If I have to switch browsers I might as well cancel my family subscription and use adblocker with another browser to achieve the desired workflow again.

I found a sufficient amount of users who are very upset about this autoplay change one way or another. Read the comments at the end of this developer update post

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes

We need a setting!

I will save you guys the time and include a few of the comments here. Almost every comment on the blog post that was for the autoplay policy changes is complaining about this change one way or another. The majority of users are asking for control over this setting! Here are a FEW of the comments on the blog post about the autoplay policy changes that stuck out to me:

1: “Same as many others. This worked for about a day before these sites seem to have found a way around it.”

-So the main debate about how this is the best user experience doesn’t hold up when the changes are only half-effective anyways.

2: “I’ve had the new Chrome for several days now. On the first day, the mute autoplaying videos feature seemed to work. But now, I've got more loud, un-muted, autoplaying videos than ever. This feature is NOT working.”
-Again, the new policy doesn’t even fully work. I think we get the idea that this feature doesn’t work correctly in the first place.

3: “We are developing an offline exhibition for children, and we need to auto play videos. Is it possible to some how make it”

4: “I can definitely agree with the masses. This is a terrible update. Not that it isn't useful ( it can be ), but why not add a "Never play videos" and "always play videos" option. You have a "Document user activation required" flag that does absolutely nothing from what I've seen.”

5: “Audio has stopped playing on several websites - 20th April 2018. Presumably something auto updated on Chrome overnight and fouled things up. I uninstalled Chrome then reinstalled it - no difference. So I've given up on Chrome after about 4 years on my Windows 10 PC and have gone over to MS Edge where autoplay of audio works fine.”

6. “Bye bye Chrome and welcome FireFox.

Installed and ready. Autoplay is working fine.”

7.  “I am considering disabling Chrome as my preferred browser... Especially if I have to go to Firefox just to watch a FREE TV Channel and cannot simply set my own personal preference to autoplay videos. Keep it simple Chrome! Seriously. WHY complicate things for what should otherwise be simple?”

 8. “Hi so my video that is mute works everywhere else but on chrome. There is no sound to begin with and I mute it. I get this error: "Unmuting failed and the element was paused instead because the user didn't interact with the document before. How can I fix this“


9. “I really hope they keep the flag to disable this forever, otherwise this will kill kiosk and unattended systems that run on chrome.”

10. “This new policy just broke the product our company provides which is an unattended media player with custom contents, this isn't cool google…”


11. “I would like videos in Yahoo View to play. I can play them in Firefox. They had been working fine in Chrome until version 66.0,3359.117 and now I get a message saying Sorry you browser blocked our content playback. You should disable the content blocker of browser and enable autoplay if you want to watch this video. Then it has instructions for Safari. I would like to continue using Chrome as my preferred browser, but this conflict send me to Firefox. How do I enable a content blocker I never disabled????”


12. “Good morning. We are a company who display scheduled digital content over web browsers. We are very affected by your new policy and we would like to know, what are the alternatives to the enterprises who use the autoplay as a business rule. I mean, this is one requirement from our customers.“


13. “how do u autoplay videos on site i play ffs and someone told me that chrome dont auto play 

FFSNG shared a link to the group: FFSNG Lounge.

12 hrs · “

14. “This is the stupidest update of a relevant software in a while. It deliberately choose random number of requirements, which are mutable over time, to destroy consistent deliver of media. It breaks the implementation trust, and overall user experience. Absolute regression.”

15. “Absolute shit update” -personal favorite

16. “How do we white-list a domain ? we develop unattended kiosks and queue systems, need audio to work” and a reply to this comment from another user who says they need the same thing

17. “What a horrible documentation. Where do I have the option to never play videos or audio?”

18. “Well, that's not very friendly for internal system. Some think client app use autoplay for training video, etc... I am not sure one size fit all strategy is the best the brilliant mind @ Google are able to come up with. Looks like Chrome is now matching the iOS behaviors, not what the customers want... How hard it is to ask the end user what the need for something as simple as autoplay?”

19. “Kiosk system are going to love this !!!!”

20. “I don't want Chrome creating an algorithm that 'decides' if I want to watch/hear a video. I want a toggle I can set based on MY preferences that applies across the web-verse - with an option to whitelist specific sites if I choose or right-click to play specific videos.”

21. “ bit disappointed how this works. CNN is a big offender mainly because of how they handle playing. It would be nice to account for video playback models such as CNN. Where even if pause the video , it starts autoplay again when in minimizes on scroll. Also being able to control autoplay with a browser setting on a url basis would be nice“

22. “I don't understand the people who are against a "Never auto-play videos" option and are arguing over this. Can you let me decide what I want please?! There are no arguments you can come up with that will make me change my mind. I'll put it back on if it really is more trouble than anything: how hard is that? “

Many many many more comments can be read here: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes

Now, we have plenty of users that want this. Can we reconsider a setting or fix it so the flag is effective??

CC'ing Dev mlamouri@ from similar bugs and requesting an update on this issue.

Thanks...

Chrome do not offer chrome://flags as a settings. We discussed this in other bugs and you keep rejecting the product reasons why we are not offering this option.

Mlamouri, are you just going to ignore all those comments on that blog post? That's more than just my opinion, that's a massive number of users 

Everyone says this update sucks and they want a setting.

You said not enough people asked for a fix. Clearly there is enough. I don't understand what more evidence you want. 

You are rejecting what users want. So be it I guess. We've entered an age where users don't apparently matter anymore.

23. "Argh! We run an audio application through Chrome that is designed to run 24/7. This update is going to kill us. Is there any way to use a flag to get round this?"

24. "Well guess I am going back to Firefox too. I do not know where you got your information that "users will love it". We should get a choice in whether or not we want autoplay. I want my youtube playlists to autoplay and now they don't. Bye Chrome."

25. " 
All that complicated engineering to calculate if I want to autoplay. There are sites I never want to autoplay, but often engage with when I"m ready. Guess it's back to add-ons to block. Or as others indicate, another browser."

These comments were posted within the 3 days I made my previous comment about the blog post.

3 additional users have voiced their opinion on needing control over this. Within 3 days.

Oh man, I missed another one within 3 days. 

26. "What on earth is all this complicated stuff; why can't we just have a simple ON or OFF toggle for auto playing content? Chrome is the only browser I've ever had a problem with on this issue."

And some more

27. "
I think a nice compromise would be to have an easy way to deactivate autoplay globally on the browser menus. Then the users can decide what they want."

28."
 
Euhm, I can't listen to the previews on Beatport.
It's already blocked.
You know the biggest music buying website for dj's and I can't listen to the previews!" and mentions in a reply leaving for Edge/IE

29. "After trying to stop autoplay in Chrome for months, I switched to FireFox.  They actually let you control your browsing and what you are forced to watch!!!"

30."Spoiler Alert!: No one loves this. Need to have the ability to DISABLE Autoplay. Globally."

31. "I am beginning to think you want us to abandon Google and other elite compute/communication giants. Would it be so hard to give us a disable autoplay period?"

32. "There are people saying I dont want autoplay-ever and there are those who want to be able to have a video play when link is opened in tabs without having to then jump over to each tab and activate video... WHY NOT CREATE FLAGS that allow Both Options? that way EACH Type of person has a CHOICE instead of creating Flat rules and imposing them on everyone...I myself want to have a tab play video without me having to jump to each tab and activate it.."

33. " 
This bizarre MEI feature is what you get when you fill a company with CompSci product managers that have little/no user empathy. Autoplay takes away user choice unless the trigger action/nav explicitly indicated it was a video"

34. ""Chrome's autoplay policies will change in January of 2018 and I'm here to tell you why and how this is going to affect video playback with sound. Spoiler alert: users are going to love it!". Really? Well, this user doesn't love this new feature at all!"

35."Why is this so complicated? There is really no reason to have this convoluted solution, when users should have a global, "no autoplay" setting. Disable it always. Then if I want to actually burn my bandwidth, I'll hit the play button."

36. "Please do not try to guess that I want autoplay turned on! I tried turning this off with the autoplay policy. Doesn't seem to work. I want to be able to set it such that autoplay NEVER happens until and unless I whitelist the site as Allow Autoplay. I can manage it from there..."

37."I loved my Autoplay, please give it back. The previous flag was way better and simpler. I just had to enable it and videos would always autoplay. That's why I am still on 59.0.3071.115."

Should I keep going?

Is there a way I can use to downgrade my Chrome back to 64? Because this "new" autoplay is not an upgrade, at all.

I found a list of older versions here: https://www.slimjet.com/chrome/google-chrome-old-version.php

It's a tough call, you either have an updated, secure browser made without the user's best intentions, or you have an older browser with actual control but miss out on security updates

I vote for a different browser altogether, since all the other browsers let users either control this, or autoplay. And you get to stay up to date. And they care about their users

re: Kiosk mode / enterprise autoplay policy configuration, this is supported. We've updated the developer documentation with links to the policy controls at:

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes

What about everyone else? 

How do you re-open a bug that has been closed? I would like input from a dev on the comments I found disagreeing with the policy changes, and lack of control over them. This cannot be ignored. 

Should I open a new bug to get the desired input? Or is there a command/comment to re-open bugs?

@nicsplatts - you need bug-editing privileges to reopen a bug.

Normally if the person is already cc'ed on the bug that you want to comment on, I'd just post the comment and @mention them, and they'll usually see it.

I would not open a new bug.

What if the developers never respond? What can we do? There's enough demand
to fix this but they won't address the issue

As I mentioned in the past, we had numbers regarding the usage of the flag. It wasn't high enough to justify keeping it around for compatibility. If we had to make a decision based on demand, it was made at that point. Also, you are putting in the same bucket the autoplay policy change and the background autoplay which are completely different features. Pretty much all comments you point at are for the former change which isn't the one you've been asking us to change.

Incorrect. All those comments are clearly asking for control over the
autoplay setting, whether it's for or against the videos actually doing so.

I don't see a single person who's been commenting on these issues who was
not asking for the same thing as I am. We need a setting and none of us
will stop until it happens.


Those numbers representing the usage of the flag are not a fair
representation of the amount of users who want this. Chrome flags are
hidden and experimental, so a lot of people didnt even know it existed.

1. Massive amounts of users want to control the behavior, they want a
setting. Please provide proof that this is not the case. All the users
commenting on all these bugs and blog posts are living proof that this is
much desired.

2. Using the metrics is invalid since the flags don't have the same
exposure as a user setting, and you yourself have said they are not
supported so why are we basing the decision off that?

3. Why is this so difficult at all? Everyone wants this except for the
developers here, so why are we going against the flow?

I appreciate your response, however it still doesn't address any of the
reasons that incite me to open a new bug for more input or a fix.

@nicsplatts -

Remember that Chrome has more than two billion users. The fact that 100 people have commented on a bug or a blog post is not proof of "a massive number of users". It is very difficult to extrapolate from bug feedback to what the true demand for something is.

We have other mechanisms (like what is alluded to in #c22) that also help us judge how much features are being used, and we try to extrapolate from all of the data we have to try and determine what to do.

As we've stated before, we do not add settings for every conceivable feature that someone might want to the chrome://settings page. Things have to meet a very high bar indeed (hundreds of millions or billions of users wanting to change things) before we'll add them, because otherwise the page could easily become unusable.

Respectfully, whether or not there is enough demand for a feature is something we decide, not something you decide for us.

I must ask you to accept that we've heard from you and to stop raising this with us every hour or day, this is not what our bug tracking system is for.

Well I wish you all the best of luck in creating a product in the eyes of
developers, not the users it was created for. I'm astounded by how many
people hate this but we can't get ANY help at all.

This is a massive letdown and motivation for me to continue to find a way
to fix it on way or another.

I appreciate your response, but it's not a solution for any of us users,
only developers.

@nicksplatts - one other note to address #3 (difficulty?), developers can make anything a 'play' button, which makes it difficult to determine whether a click is intended to play video or not. It's unclear whether a global setting would match user expectations.

The comments above requesting a setting are split between wanting to disable, and enable autoplay. For the former, users who feel that the new policy isn't blocking enough unwanted sound can use Site Muting to disable sound on a site-by-site basis. For the latter, users can use chrome://flags to enable autoplay for all sites. We'll be comparing usage of that flag vs other flags and we'll revisit this if demand is high.

But the autoplay flag doesn't work!

@johnpallett
I think the better solution is to listen to both sides. One one hand, if chromium adds this, these specific powers users are going to be happy. One the other, developers need to be kept happy too otherwise, the inconsistent behavior for chromium becomes a pain to maintain, and we cant figure out that why the user is not able to play the video on page, or anything for that matter.

As a dev, if you are going to allow muted autoplay video, atleast allow same for muted WebAudi API. There are just too many (in thousands) of apps and games to fix because of this. 

If you want, I'll write up a patch to support this behavior, which will satisfy both sides. 

Supporting behavior for both sides would be the deisred solution of every user that has made the effort to comment on this issue, both on the blog post and on bugs here. 

I think it would be great since basing the usage of of the /broken/ flag seems very unfair, as mentioned by johnpallet. I just tried the flag again and it still wasn't letting me autoplay. 

Thanks 

Folks here have taken huge amounts of their own time to report in detail on this ongoing issue.  Clearly the community here either doesn't involve, or allow the involvement of folks from Google who have the means and/or authority to fix this once and for all. When your users tell you that auto play video is not acceptable listen to them. No one cares whether you or your paying customers want to push this auto-play video content at us. Safari and Firefox have listened. Why hasn't Google?

We're still waiting for a workaround to this issue

You can't possibly have metrics on a feature that you never implemented. A setting that allows a user to enable/disable autoplay globally. That is what users have been asking for for years and you keep coming up with excuses for not doing it. Why?

Please, let me control whether videos (from any source - ads or content) autoplay or not. 

You'll have to open a new bug, and hop a different developer picks it up. These guys aren't going to do jack about it and I've opened tens of bugs and cited hundreds of comments complaining about this