One way that social media sites and apps attempt to keep the attention of their users is to configure videos to automatically play as you scroll past them. Many people find this annoying as this increases data usage on potentially limited mobile data connections. Having sound enabled on videos that have been automatically played can make them even more annoying. The idea behind automatically playing videos is that they may occasionally catch the interest of a user and lead to them spending more time in the app, earning the company more ad revenue.
In its Android app, YouTube has implemented a similar feature that it calls “Muted playback in feeds”. This feature automatically plays the video at the top of your screen in the “Home” and “Subscription” feeds.
How does “Muted playback in feeds” work?
Due to the small size of the preview, the resolution of the video is quite low, meaning only a small amount of data is used by the feature. If and when a video plays all the way through to its end, the feed automatically scrolls down to the next video and starts playing it too.
To minimise the intrusiveness of the feature, all video previews are muted and instead use subtitles. In the “Home” feed, inline ads are treated as normal videos and can be automatically played.
How can you disable “Muted playback in feeds”?
To enable or disable the feature, you need to open YouTube’s in-app settings. To do so, tap your profile picture icon in the top-right corner of the app.
In the “Account” menu, tap “Settings” which will be the second to last setting.
Once on the settings page, tap “General” to get to the right page.
Tap “Muted playback in feeds” on the general settings page, it will be the fifth option from the top. In the popup that appears you can configure if the feature is always enabled, only works on Wi-Fi, or is completely disabled.
Tap “Off” to disable the feature entirely, or another option if you prefer. Once you’ve selected an option, simply return to browsing for videos, as the change will be instantly applied.
Sigge. says
I do not use the youtube app on my android phone.
I just open youtube videos from a google search or some other webpage and then youtube says I have to tap on the video to turn on sound.
Don’t understand why because it haven’t done that for a long time but recently it started doing it again and it’s annoying.
X x says
I had it off once. Now it is doing it again, bit the feature is still turned off..
On both my phone and laptop.
D Moriarty says
This description does not match what I found in the app.
We get it to Google keeps changing this junk all the time, maybe you should just give up trying to keep up with them as they spiral into deeper and deeper incompetence.
Rahul C says
I want to turn it on. I did the steps mentioned and selected always on still it is not working
David Jacobs says
Can you help – I do not have the ‘muted playback in feeds’ option in my settings/general and yet it’s playing back so annoyingly. I have googled it and to no avail. My phone is a Samsung from 2016, a Galaxy Core Prime. . but if it can switch itself on there must be some way to switch it off as usually it’s off. ??? Many thanks.
Sakauddin says
I am doing but there is no sound. Please fix it
PEN Chanter says
I only see “General” under settings on the Youtube Android App, but no OFF option for any type of ‘autoplay’. I am looking to disable this “Muted playback in feeds” feature using the web interface.