This way you ensure that videos on social media do not play automatically

News images are quickly shared via social media, but you don’t always want to see everything. This way you can stop automatically playing videos on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.

Stop auto-playing videos

Nowadays news images are shared very quickly via social media. The recent terrorist attack on a mosque in New Zealand was even broadcast to the world via a live stream. It then didn’t take long for footage from that live stream to be distributed via Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and so on.

By default, these social networks ensure that videos play automatically. As a result, you sometimes get to see terrible images that you would rather not have seen. That is why we have listed how to disable automatic video playback in various social media.

Disable auto-playing videos on Twitter

Go through the following steps in Twitter’s iOS app:

1. Tap your profile picture at the top of the app;
2. Select ‘Settings and privacy> Data usage’;
3. At the video heading, tap on ‘Automatically play videos’ and choose ‘Never’.

Disable auto-playing videos on Facebook

Go through the following steps in Facebook’s iOS app:

1. Tap the menu button at the top of the app;
2. Scroll down and tap ‘Settings & privacy> Settings’;
3. Search for ‘Media and Contacts’ and tap it;
4. Tap on ‘Autoplay’;
5. Make sure the check mark next to ‘Never auto-play videos’ is blue.

Disable auto-playing videos on YouTube

Go through the following steps in the YouTube iOS app:

1. Tap your profile at the top of the app;
2. Choose ‘Settings> Autoplay’;
3. Switch the switch at ‘Automatically play next video’;
4. Tap on ‘Autoplay on the homepage’ and choose ‘Off’.

Disable auto-playing videos on Reddit

Go through the following steps in Reddit’s iOS app:

1. Tap your profile at the top of the app and tap ‘Settings’;
2. Tap on ‘Autoplay’ and choose ‘Never’.

Filter responses

In addition to videos, you sometimes get to read a lot of other nasty things via social media. With the Chrome extension Tune (Download) you filter that out. You indicate which type of toxic reactions you no longer want to see.