How to Stop Audio & Videos Automatically Playing in Microsoft Edge

Microsoft added a new option in the Edge browser using which users can block autoplaying of audio and videos on websites. Let’s learn more about this feature.

Consider yourself in a situation when you visit a website using Edge browser and a video or video file starts playing automatically without your consent.

The option to disable autoplaying of audio and video file was available in Edge Legacy. The feature was also available in earlier builds of Edge Chromium, but due to unknown reasons, the company decided to pull it off.

Later, Microsoft brings back the option again behind the flags and users have to enable it manually using the feature flag “Show block option in autoplay settings” at this address:edge://flags/#edge-autoplay-user-setting-block-option.

That means, out of the box “Control if audio and video play automatically on sites” option under Edge Permission settings only had two options Limit and Allow.

To add the Block option to the drop-down users have set the above flag feature to Enabled. Now the same option is enabled out of the box in the Edge canary build 114.0.1779.0. That means you no longer need a flag to enable it.

In case, you want to enable and start using the block autoplay audio and video option in Edge, then here’s what you need to do:

How to Stop Audio & Videos Automatically Playing in Microsoft Edge

Launch Microsoft Edge browser (Canary), then click on the Settings and more (…) option and select Settings.

On the left side, you need to switch to Site Permissions. Here, scroll down to the bottom and select ‘Media autoplay‘.

Alternatively, you can visit: edge://settings/content/mediaAutoplay

Using the drop-down next to the “Control if audio and video play automatically on sites” option change settings from Allow to Block.

You might be interested in reading a blog post on How to Stop Sites from Autoplaying videos in Google Chrome.

What are your thoughts about this new feature to block media ads on sites in Microsoft Edge? Let us know your opinion in the comments.