Do not autoplay videos

[Contruffin]

Is Your Feature Request Related to a Problem?

The current behavior of the app is that it autoplays embedded videos when the post is opened. This is unusual and unexpected behavior for several reasons:

• The native Lemmy website does not autoplay embedded videos and requires users to click the play button in order to play the video
• The app does not distinguish between embedded videos and regular links. The user does not know if a post is a link to a website or if it is a video until after the user taps on the post.

This is somewhat related to another issue posted recently (#1161), where a user requested auto-mute functionality. Both issues stem from the fact that it is a nuisance to have a video play unexpectedly.

Feature Description

When a video is loaded in the app, do not play the video until the user taps on the play button.

Alternative Solutions

It may also be helpful to have a separate icon to mark videos. Maybe a triangle play button? Currently, it is being marked with the link icon (chain symbol), which makes it impossible to distinguish between a regular link. However, I'm unsure if that's technically feasible

Additional Context

No response

[hjiangsu]

Thanks for the report! Could you elaborate a bit more about what you mean by "embedded videos"? Right now, Thunder doesn't support in-app video formats (this is still WIP).

Aside from videos, the only animated format that is supported at the moment are GIFs (perhaps you meant GIFs?).

It would be helpful if you could provide an example post of what you mean here so that I can reproduce the issue!

[Contruffin]

Thanks for the reply. These types of posts are relatively rare in my feed, so I might not have any examples to give you right now, but I'll keep an eye out for them. But to be specific, I mean that the post links to a video-sharing site. When this occurs, the thumbnail (in compact mode) shows that the post is a link. Tapping on the thumbnail will open the video, and the video will automatically begin to play. I figured this was an embedded video, since doing this doesn't open up the site - it just pulls up the video in a generic-looking video player with video controls

[hjiangsu]

Ahh interesting - it must be links that point straight to a video file that the in-app browser then displays as a regular video (e.g., links that end in .mp4)

I think once we add in native video playing functionality, we can make it so that videos are muted + do not autoplay. I'm not sure if we can currently control that with the linked "embedded" videos though.

[Contruffin]

Did some quick browsing through some video communities and found an example of what I mean. Please see the link for an example:
https://lemm.ee/post/21763351

Based on the link, I believe you may be right. It's a shame that it's not really something that can be controlled for now, since getting one of these videos can be quite disruptive (especially in public!) Anyways, thanks for all your hard work!

[hjiangsu]

Thanks for the link example! Something that we might be able to do in the meantime while the in-app video player is being worked on is to add an additional badge if we detect these types of links (by detecting the ending of the url to see if its a video type).

This might reduce the disruption at least for now!

[hjiangsu]

Update: There is now an open PR which adds in a badge for detecting video URLs. This only applies to URLs where the ending is a video type (.mp4, etc)

[hjiangsu]

Just circling back to this, v0.4.0 is now released with experimental video player support. You should see an option to enable/disable video autoplay in Settings -> Video.

I'll go ahead and close this as it should now be completed. However, please do open up a new issue if you encounter any issues with this feature. Thanks!