Stop Videos Playing Automatically in a few simple steps.

Does it drive you insane when videos in sidebars or embedded randomly through a site begin to play automatically?
It is possible to save your sanity and download limit by preventing this in most common browsers.

How to stop automatically playing ads, videos and media in Chrome

Disabling autoplay videos and media in Chrome is simple. First of all you need to type “chrome://chrome/settings/content” into the URL bar. Then all you need to do is scroll down to the plug-in section, and select ‘Let me choose when to run plugin content’.

How to stop automatically playing ads, videos and media in Firefox

The function can be disabled through the browser’s own settings. Type “about:config” into the address bar, click through the warning and search for “autoplay” options—double-click on media.autoplay.embed and the value changes to false.

How to stop automatically playing ads, videos and media in Internet Explorer

Select “Safety” and tick ActiveX Filtering to block some kinds of content.
Another option is to choose Tools then Manage add-ons to get access to the Shockwave Flash plugin. Right-click to disable it.

How to stop automatically playing ads, videos and media in Microsoft Edge

You can’t – yet.
Just don’t use it 🙂

The steps for IE described above are the ones most commonly recommended, and they stopped some auto-playing content, but plenty still got through.
It seems that Chrome and Firefox are much more effective at blocking this behaviour than either the old or new browsers from Microsoft.