Firefox finally gets an option to mute sites with autoplay sound

Autoplay videos are about to get a lot less annoying if you use Firefox.

In the newest version of the experimental Firefox Nightly Edition (version 63.0a1), the popular web browser now gives users control over whether a site is allowed to autoplay videos when it loads. Mozilla announced this feature in a product roadmap earlier this year.

For the uninitiated, Mozilla regularly releases a pre-release version of the latest Firefox build. The new autoplay video-blocking feature has just made its live debut in the Firefox Nightly 63.0a1 version. The official release of Firefox 63, which is slated for the October 23 should make autoplay blocking available to all Firefox users who upgrade to the latest version.

While Firefox has long blocked ads with autoplaying sound, this build introduces the first time Firefox allows its users to block any sort of autoplaying media on a website.

Firefox users who would like to take advantage of this feature have a few options. They can choose to block all autoplaying media, or receive a pop-up warning for each individual website and choose whether you’d like the autoplaying media to turn on or off. Users also have the option to just let all autoplaying media function as intended, but we can’t imagine why anyone would do this.

While Google’s Chrome web browser launched its autoplay blocking feature earlier this year, Firefox’s own autoplaying blocker is still quite notable. While Chrome is far and away the most used web browser globally, statcounter, which tracks worldwide browser usage, places Firefox at over 5 percent of the browser market share.

If enough people block the annoying scourge that is autoplaying videos with sound through their browser, perhaps this internet pet peeve will eventually just die out.