Playing video automatically on Safari won't work

Question

When I open my website in Safari (desktop) my video usually starts automatically. I know in the past it already won't play automatic on iPad or iPhone but not on desktop.

It's like Safari set new rules. Is there a way to play the videos automatically? Because there is a website that I've found that still automatically play videos on their website on Safari.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I have Mojave and found a solution that worked for a site I use often.

One can go to the top bar menu:

Safari Preferences -> The 'Websites' (tab heading) -> Auto-Play (left side)

As the default websites Auto-Play option is Stop Media with Sound, this strategy introduced the permission issue.

Allow media from that site. One can turn it on at the bottom of that box for all sites.

There is a simpler way in the same menu next to Safari Prefrences, called 'Settings for This Website' -- it allows you to make that same setting, and a few others rather than having to poke around the rest of the Settings box.

Clearly that means a user has to allow it.

The site where I found a working example: https://support.shadowhealth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009548313-Audio-issues-in-Safari

I did post the way to do it above so the site is not needed if they ever take it down, but they did do nice screen shots. I put it here for handy reference.

To deal with browsers who 'wander' to your location, you would need to provide a button to launch videos or audio clips.

Answer 2

This can be circumvented using the following properties:

<video muted playsinline autoplay></video>

But autoplaying with the sound turned on is indeed not possible anymore. More information can be found on webkit.org.