1

I am building a Learning App. This has a quiz-like interface, so, lots of screens. Most screens are accompanied by animations. Considering quality and file-size, .mp4 seems to be the best format for the animations. But, HTML like:

<video autoplay muted controls>
     <source src="file.mp4">
</video>

doesn't autoplay on Chrome (the latest versions) if the Data Saver is turned on. (It works on Firefox and Safari.) These .mp4s are ~30 KB in size. I understand that Google is trying to prevent unnecessary data-heavy background videos from being downloaded. But, in my case, (i) asking the user to click on the play button everytime; or, (ii) asking her to turn off Data Saver, which is hidden somewhere in the browser settings, is terrible UX.

I tried a jQuery .load() followed by a .play() on pageload. I created a fake button that would do .load() and .play() during onclick(), and triggered the button click on pageload, etc. Nothing seems to work. Any hacks that would make the video autoplay even with Data Saver on?

contrariwise
  • 117
  • 1
  • 10

1 Answers1

3

I am the lead on the Chrome Data Saver team.

This is working as intended since Data Saver prevents autoplay. However, I believe this behavior may be changing in a future version of Chrome.

mdwelsh
  • 398
  • 2
  • 8
  • I understand it is working as intended and also agree that it is a useful feature. That's why I wanted to know if there are hacks around it :) Anyway, if the feature took into account the size of the media files, it would probably be more effective. – contrariwise Jul 27 '17 at 08:33
  • Right, the problem is that the browser cannot know the size of the videos before deciding to trigger autoplay. – mdwelsh Jul 27 '17 at 12:52
  • 2
    "There is no autoplay if Data Saver mode is enabled. If Data Saver mode is enabled, autoplay is disabled in Media settings." One thing I know from Data Saver intro is "Data Saver won't work if you're on secure pages (addresses that start with https://) or if you're browsing in private with Incognito mode." As I am using Android Chrome 58 and activated Data Saver, The video is still not showing even I open in Incognito mode with https://: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/autoplay (The video showing area is remain empty) Any Ideas to it? – Smilefounder Sep 12 '17 at 07:58