Videos playing differently lately.

[vanlassie]

I use an iPhone exclusively to browse DU. Seems like suddenly, I can be scrolling thru (down) posts and if there is an embedded video, it plays if I touch that screen at all. There is an arrow to tap, but I’m not tapping it. I’m probably scrolling along the right side of the screen. Very annoying! Ideas for me? Thanks!

[zuul]

1. I noticed it too.

[vanlassie]

2. That helps! I was feeling crazy! It's not a good update, right? What is the source.

[zuul]

3. No idea.

I’m teaching myself not to touch that part of the screen as I scroll. Or just avoiding posts with video.

I usually have a cat on my lap. When those videos load automatically, it scares the crap out of him.

[unc70]

4. Happening to me, too. Started noticing it 1-2 weeks ago.

As soon as the video is exposed/visible, it starts playing. Highly annoying when around other people. Suddenly my phone is blaring something I don't even want to watch. Don't know if the change is with YouTube, DU, or Safari.

[EarlG]

5. Are these

videos in tweets, or YouTube videos?

[vanlassie]

6. First I found is You Tube OP: Cosmos Blues this am

My City Was Gone

[dweller]

8. Both

Pretty much any vid … used to be you could touch vid while playing and it would continue, but show how far it has progressed/ how much more etc
but now it just stops like it’s through playing, have to restart to finish …
But like others are saying it starts with the slightest touch


✌🏻

[vanlassie]

7. Paul Goser is Not Well

Twitter

[EarlG]

9. You could give this a try

Scroll down to the section about safari on iPhone:

https://www.alphr.com/how-to-stop-autoplay-videos-safari/

FWIW we have not made any changes to DU that would cause this.

[Lars39]

10. Yep, found that out about 2am one night.

Very annoying

[EarlG]

11. Update on this because I've started noticing it too

It's not a DU thing, it seems to be a change made on iOS related to how all videos are handled, but I haven't really been able to find anything online specifically referencing it.

By way of an explanation, there are a few different ways that interactive elements on a page can be handled in a web browser. For example, if you click a link with your mouse, you'll notice that it doesn't actually trigger the link when you click down on the mouse button (mouse down), but when you lift your finger off the button (mouse up). Try it -- you can click on a link, hold the button, move your mouse off the link, let go, and the link will not activate. This behavior can be manipulated in the page code -- you can adjust links to activate as soon as the mouse button is clicked down, for example. You can also get links to do things when you just hover the mouse over them.

Previously it seems that videos in iOS were activated on "touch up", so if you were scrolling down a page and you touched a video, it wouldn't start playing if you "flicked" it off the screen as you were scrolling down. Now however it seems that videos start playing on "touch down" -- ie. as soon as they are touched. So if you accidentally touch one while scrolling, it will play.

It might have something to do with videos playing "inline" -- that is, playing inside the page they are on, instead of opening up to full screen. This is definitely not DU-specific, I've seen it on a bunch of different sites recently, so I think it's an iOS thing. Like I said, I've had a bit of a hard time finding any discussions of this behavior, so unfortunately I don't know if there's anything that can be done about it at the moment.

[vanlassie]

12. As the OP, I really appreciate your easy to understand explanation. It is SO annoying!

It sure isn’t an improvement, that’s for sure.