Apple has released the final version of macOS High Sierra to the public, and while the upgrade may not seem as groundbreaking as it did for iOS with the iOS 11 update, there’s still a lot to like here. While macOS High Sierra mostly deals with improvements under the hood that will go unnoticed by most users, there are some changes that deserve attention. One of these improvements comes to our beloved Safari browser. Now with Safari, you can block annoying videos that previously played automatically beyond your control. This is a functionality I’ve been waiting for years and it’s finally here. If you also want to stop annoying videos that play automatically on websites, you’ve come to the right place. Because in this article, we will show you how to block autoplay videos in Safari on macOS High Sierra:
Stop Autoplaying Videos in Safari
Safari provides the ability to block videos from autoplaying on any website. You can enable this feature either for each website separately or for each website at the same time. I prefer to only do this individually for the sites that annoy me the most, but you can do this for all websites at once. We will examine both methods one by one:
Block Autoplay Videos in Safari (Individual Websites)
1. Start Safari and load the website you want to block autoplay videos. For this tutorial we will only upload our own website. By the way, if you are wondering, there are no auto-playing videos on our site. Now, Right-click (control-click) the address bar and click “Settings for This Website”.
2. Now, click the dropdown menu It’s next to where it says “Autoplay”.
3. You will find three options that you can choose from the drop-down menu. You can use the “Allow All Autoplay” option, which basically defeats our purpose, or you can choose one of the other two options. “Stop Audio Media” and “Never Autoplay”. The first stops the autoplay of videos that only contain audio, while later it stops all videos whether they contain audio or not.
4. I don’t want any videos to play automatically, so I chose the last option.
Disable Autoplay Videos in Safari (All Websites)
1. Launch Safari and Open the “Preferences” panel.
2. Here click on “Websites” and then Choose “Autoplay” from the side menu.
3. You should now see the option that says at the bottom of the page. “When visiting other websites:” and a drop-down menu to its right.
4. By default the “Stop Audio Media” option is selected, but choose one of three options that we discussed earlier.
One thing to note is that the changes you make in the global setting do not reflect on the websites you change the settings one by one. As you can see, the Autoplay panel shows websites whose settings you have changed individually. If you want to add them to the universal settings, just click to select website and press delete. Or you can change its settings individually to match your universal settings.
SEE ALSO: How to Stop Autoplaying GIFs in Your Browser
Stop Videos Autoplaying in Safari
As you can see, this is a very useful feature that you can use to stop annoying videos from playing automatically. Apart from that, there are many more changes that Safari brings with the High Sierra update. For example, Safari now stops websites from tracking you while you browse the web. So, have you updated your Mac to High Sierra? Let us know your favorite features that come with macOS High Sierra in the comments section below.
