New Chrome update will prevent autoplay of videos in background tabs

The latest update of Google Chrome will put a stop to the most annoying things on the Internet: background audio of videos playing on inactive tabs. The announcement was made via a Google+ post of a Chrome team member.

For those who haven’t experienced this nuisance, we are talking about the videos that will play as soon as you load up a webpage – even if you don’t want to watch them. This usually happens when you open up a spammy website and small ads start playing, or if you open up several YouTube tabs and all of them start playing simultaneously.

Once this update arrives, it will hold off on auto-playing videos, ads, or any other audio on inactive tabs. Interestingly, it will still allow such media to be pre-loaded if indicated but Chrome will delay the start of playback until you actually visit the tab. This means that you will no longer be experiencing those ‘Where is this sound coming from?’ moments.

Moreover, there have been complaints that Chrome tabs take up a lot of power specifically for Mac users. According to Google, this new update would not only control autoplay but also conserve power. Chrome will only consume power once a tab is foregrounded — only if the tab is active.

There are other third party Chrome extensions available that stop auto playing of media. Since extensions weigh down your browser’s performance, this new update would obviously make things easier and let your browser breathe a little.

The update is currently only available for the developer version of Google Chrome. There is no specific release date yet (although some suggest it’s September 1), but developer versions ultimately make it to all other versions as well.

Image: ArsTechnica