This allows you to test your website as if user were strongly engaged with your site and playback autoplay would be always allowed. You can disable the autoplay policy entirely by using a command line flag: chrome.exe -autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required.

# Developer switchesĪs a developer, you may want to change Chrome autoplay policy behavior locally to test your website for different levels of user engagement. Screenshot of the about://media-engagement internal page in Chrome. When it is high enough, media is allowed to autoplay on desktop only.Ī user's MEI is available at the about://media-engagement internal page.

Size of the video (in px) must be greater than 200x140.įrom that, Chrome calculates a media engagement score, which is highest on sites where media is played on a regular basis.Consumption of the media (audio/video) must be greater than seven seconds.Chrome's approach is a ratio of visits to significant media playback events per origin: The Media Engagement Index (MEI) measures an individual's propensity to consume media on a site. Top frames can delegate autoplay permission to their iframes to allow autoplay with sound.The user has added the site to their home screen on mobile or installed the PWA on desktop.On desktop, the user's Media Engagement Index threshold has been crossed, meaning the user has previously played video with sound.The user has interacted with the domain (click, tap, etc.).These changes are intended to give greater control of playback to users and to benefit publishers with legitimate use cases. # New behaviorsĪs you may have noticed, web browsers are moving towards stricter autoplay policies in order to improve the user experience, minimize incentives to install ad blockers, and reduce data consumption on expensive and/or constrained networks. Internet memes tagged 'autoplay' found on Imgflip and Imgur.

Chrome autoplay video blocker