Microsoft begins testing blocker for auto-playing media

Jul 8, 2019 11:49 GMT  ·  By

Despite being offered to Windows and Mac users as a work-in-progress, the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser keeps evolving, and every little update that it receives brings new functionality to both platforms.

The most recent update is support for blocking automatically playing media, a feature that is already available in other browsers, but which is still being developed for the new Edge.

Auto-playing media has become more and more intrusive in the last couple of years, and it basically comes down to videos or sounds that begin playing on page load. This is something that a lot of websites use, and if you’re a frequent news reader, you probably noticed that there are a lot of portals out there that play videos when you load an article.

Fortunately, Microsoft is working on resolving this annoyance, and the company has recently confirmed that it was developing a blocker to prevent media from automatically playing.

The very first version of this blocker is now available for testers to try it out, and all they need is the latest version of Microsoft Edge Canary. I tested the steps detailed here on version 77.0.211.0, and the flag is already there, so you must be running at least this build.

Microsoft Edge Canary and the flag you must enable

First of all, a few things that you should know about this auto-playing media blocker.

Microsoft says it doesn’t affect the most popular websites, so you may not necessarily notice any difference if you enable this blocker and hope it would block auto-playing content on high-profile pages.

Then, the blocker doesn’t come with any configuration settings, and this means you are not allowed to edit the blocking list or tweak its filters for restricting content that it might actually miss.

The flag exists on both Windows and macOS, so you can use the steps below to enable it on either platform.

The first step comes down to updating Microsoft Edge Canary to the latest version, so you must be running at least the build that I mentioned above. Then, launch the browser and in the address bar type the following command:


edge://flags
Next, use the search box at the top of the flags configuration screen to look for a flag called:
Limit Media Autoplay
If you want to do the whole thing fast, you can just copy the code below and paste it in the address bar of Microsoft Edge browser:
edge://flags/#edge-limit-autoplay
The flag description explains its purpose:

“Algorithmically limits certain websites from playing media automatically. Most popular websites will remain unaffected. - Mac, Windows.”

By default, this flag ships as disabled because it’s still in an experimental stage, so you must click the drop-down menu next to its name and switch it to an enabled state. A reboot of the browser is going to be needed to save your settings and activate the blocker. The next time you launch Edge Canary, the blocker should be active.

Microsoft says it is also working on per-site controls, which means that you will be allowed to configure dedicated rules for each website that you load. In other words, if you come across pages that load content on launch and it escapes this generic blocker, you will be allowed to set up a dedicated filter that will take care of it.

There’s no ETA for the time being, but this feature should become available shortly, especially as Microsoft is putting more effort into getting these blockers ready. For now, keep in mind that the whole thing is still in its early days and some features might not work exactly as anticipated.

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Microsoft Edge Canary
Microsoft Edge Canary and the flag you must enable
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