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How to Disable YouTube Autoplay Videos

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If you want YouTube to stop automatically playing the next video, here’s how to disable YouTube autoplay and get your sanity back.

You may have noticed over the last few weeks that after you watch a YouTube video in the web browser, another related video will begin playing shortly afterward, even if the video you were watching isn’t part of a playlist.

This used to be an experimental feature that YouTube tried out on some of its users, but it’s now been a regular feature that has rolled out to all users, and if you’re like me, you hate the idea of autoplay.

youtube-autoplay-1

On YouTube, a new video will begin playing about 10 seconds after the last one finishes. Something like this isn’t a huge deal if you usually close out the window right after you get done watching it, but if you’re someone who likes to stay on the page and read the comments after the video is done, it gets annoying when a new video automatically starts playing.

However, here’s how to disable autoplay on YouTube.

How to Disable YouTube Autoplay

Surprisingly, it’s really simple to disable the autoplay feature on YouTube, and it literally takes one click to do it.

When you get to a video that you want to watch, head toward the upper-right corner of the webpage and look for a blue toggle switch that says “Autoplay.” Simply click on that toggle switch to turn it off. From there on out, YouTube will no longer automatically play another video after you watched the initial one.

youtube-autoplay-2

One thing to be aware of though is that YouTube saves this setting in a “cookie.” A cookie is simply a piece of information that a website gives your web browser and then it stores that information in a text file. The cookie is then sent back to the website every time your web browser visits it. Think of it as custom settings for a website, and disabling autoplay on YouTube is one of those custom settings.

The kicker is that whenever you reset cookies for your web browser, YouTube will lose those custom settings and autoplaying videos will make a reappearance until you go to disable the feature again.

Other YouTube Tips

Disabling autoplaying videos isn’t the only trick that you can do on YouTube. In fact, there are a whole bunch of neat things you can do on YouTube that you may not have thought were possible.

You can save YouTube videos in order to watch them offline on Android devices, and you can even do the same thing on iPhone (although with only third-party apps).

There’s also a trick to change the YouTube video quality manually on Android, rather than relying on the app to automatically determine the best quality, which isn’t entirely accurate most of the time.

Plus, on iPhone there are ways to “listen” to YouTube videos without having the video play, which can be great if you’re trying to save on data while on the go. This can be done in Safari with a neat little trick, or you can use third-party apps like Musi, which lets you browse YouTube videos, but will only play the audio in order to save bandwidth, which is perfect if you only want to hear the music of a music video.

11 Comments

11 Comments

  1. bert

    03/25/2015 at 11:23 am

    Useless tip. Many have auto-destroy cookies or no Google account. Then this tip is useless. We need a plugin or an Adblock item to block the responsable Javascript.

    • Deep Profound Philosophy

      04/09/2015 at 1:07 pm

      I concur.

  2. youtube registered user

    04/16/2015 at 3:17 am

    autoplay turns itself back on 2-3x/week.

  3. evmo

    06/22/2015 at 12:12 pm

    if anyone of you find a way to permanently disable Autoplay please let us know – in the meantime – it takes less than .05 seconds to turn it off if it comes back again – thanks for the tip Craig!

  4. anon

    07/08/2015 at 3:49 am

    Adding this filter rule to your adblock plus preferences should work:
    s.ytimg.com/yts/jsbin/*/watch_autoplayrenderer.js

  5. munchy 22

    09/04/2015 at 5:51 pm

    wow are most people doing videos on this topic really as stupid as this auther too. Auto play on at default= google sucks. It is not a feature people want or need. Actually I don’t know a single person that thinks its good. My only hope is that one day another option will be available that makes google and you tube redundant. In the mean time enjoy autoplay and google + notttttttttttttttt.

  6. D.E.B. B

    10/10/2015 at 10:35 am

    I agree. Having this crappy option keep turning itself on by itself REALLY, REALLY SUCKS. Youtube knows it has us by the balls so they don’t give a sh!t what anyone thinks. It’s all about getting views and click throughs.

  7. Arnold

    03/08/2016 at 2:22 pm

    That’s funny, I want the auto play to turn on for my Android App and I can’t figure out how to do it. I listen to youtube while I workout and I hate having it stop and wait for me to select another video.

  8. Silverwolf

    05/03/2016 at 10:24 pm

    Sign this petition if you want to stop it: https://www.change.org/p/youtube-stop-youtube-autoplay

  9. Suckmyass

    05/24/2016 at 11:16 am

    Website name:gottabemobile

    Tip: not for mobile

    SeemsGood

  10. Jennifer N Phillips

    12/04/2016 at 9:18 pm

    I can’t shut off the playback of youtube red.

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