Pop up videos are killing my low spec PC. How do I stop them?
Hi everyone,
I have this old laptop (768p) that just can't handle pop up videos, autoplay, picture in picture or whathever they call it when you are scrolling a page and a video suddenly jumps out to the corner. It is very annoying, intrusive and I don't know how to prevent it. When it happens, it takes a lot of space in my already small tab and CPU barely can keep scrolling. I hate this "feature".
Any ideas? All I have read so far are about disabling controls or autoplay, but I need it to completely disappear (or never been loaded at all).
Thank you!
All Replies (7)
You can look at these prefs on the the about:config page to see what settings work for you to block autoplay.
- media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2
- media.autoplay.default = 5 [0:allow; 1:blockAudible; 2:Prompt; 5:blockAll]
- media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I accept the risk!" to continue.
Hi cor-el,
I changed media.autoplay.blocking_policy to 5; media.autoplay.default to 5; and media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground to false. Restarted Firefox and... Video still pop out when scrolling - now in slow motion - despite the fact it does not autoplay. Firefox performance continues to drop when the
Example URL here: https://www.pcgamer.com/hearthstones-hunter-dual-class-legendaries-are-the-most-exciting-cards-to-be-revealed-so-far/
Attached screenshot shows the video pop up covering some of the menu items.
Is there a way to not allow the video to pop out? Not playing automatically is progress, but not success since it is still becoming annoying and heavy for my low spec PC.
Thank you!
media.autoplay.blocking_policy should be 2 like I wrote above and not 5 unless this is a typo.
Sorry, my mistake. However, it did not work. Only difference is now the pop up is not in upper right corner but in middle right, as shown in the new screenshot.
☹
You will probably need a content blocking extension.
You can look at uBlock Origin.
uBlock Origin also does not work. If you "zap" pop up many elements it will only result in that single page. Not friendly enough to find out if is there a video pop up filtering. Don't think this kind of solution applies here, I was hoping it would be some hidden setting that would just prevent videos from popping up in Firefox, no extension required.
I really appreciate your help cor-el, though, but it looks like either I get a better computer or move to websites with less "gimmicks".
To completely prevent buffering (which can start even if playback is blocked), you could consider using the "Image Video Block" extension which I tested very lightly back in February:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/image-video-block/
I'm not sure I figured out how it works, but I'm attaching a screenshot of its menu showing global settings and how to make site exceptions. You can globally block videos, images, or both. Or if only a few sites need to be tamed, you could try allowing videos globally and just create blocks for individual sites (I didn't test that). If you experiment with it, let us know what you think.
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