Safari auto playing videos (ads!) with sound

[droplink]

Another lovely change in Tahoe;
Websites that have auto playing ads have started to play them with sound in Tahoe.
I have the setting "stop media with sound" enabled in the settings, yet some websites (motorsport.com being one) still autoplay with music. Argh.

Does any one know this bug / "feature"?
It also happens on i26 too...

 

[Alameda]

Maybe try a different browser?

 

[bogdanw]

Recent, similar thread "Safari Autoplay and the NYT" https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/safari-autoplay-and-the-nyt.2483195/

Free - ‎uBlock Origin Lite https://apps.apple.com/app/ublock-origin-lite/id6745342698

 

[benholt]

"Stop Media with Sound" was always a heuristic — Safari has to detect the sound before it can stop it, so the first half-second usually leaks through, and ad networks that fade volume in from zero defeat the detector entirely. Tahoe didn't actually make it worse so much as the ad inventory shifted to those fade-in patterns.

Switch your default to "Never Auto-Play" instead (Safari → Settings → Websites → Auto-Play, dropdown at the bottom). That one's not a heuristic — it's enforced at the WebKit level, so it actually holds against the ad players. Then for the handful of sites where you do want auto-play (YouTube etc.), right-click the URL bar → Settings for This Website → Auto-Play: Allow All. Takes about a minute to set up.

uBlock Origin Lite that bogdanw linked is also good but the new Lite version is limited by the Manifest V3 declarative content-blocker API on Safari, so it's not quite as aggressive as full uBlock used to be on Firefox. Works for most autoplay ad units though.

 

[boswald]

In addition to what @benholt said...

You could always get a subscription to AdGuard or NextDNS and see if that blocks them. I have both (ADG for my Android devices, DNS for everything else) and I haven't changed any Safari settings for audio.

 

[droplink]

"Stop Media with Sound" was always a heuristic — Safari has to detect the sound before it can stop it, so the first half-second usually leaks through, and ad networks that fade volume in from zero defeat the detector entirely. Tahoe didn't actually make it worse so much as the ad inventory shifted to those fade-in patterns.

Switch your default to "Never Auto-Play" instead (Safari → Settings → Websites → Auto-Play, dropdown at the bottom). That one's not a heuristic — it's enforced at the WebKit level, so it actually holds against the ad players. Then for the handful of sites where you do want auto-play (YouTube etc.), right-click the URL bar → Settings for This Website → Auto-Play: Allow All. Takes about a minute to set up.

uBlock Origin Lite that bogdanw linked is also good but the new Lite version is limited by the Manifest V3 declarative content-blocker API on Safari, so it's not quite as aggressive as full uBlock used to be on Firefox. Works for most autoplay ad units though.

Thanks, thats good advice!