The autoplay on the YouTube home feed is designed to let you quickly preview videos to make a better choice whether to watch the entire video. Sadly, not only does it get annoying at times, it also takes a toll on data usage. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to stop YouTube videos from playing while scrolling on the home feed. Let’s examine how to do this on Android and iPhone.
Why Should You Disable Auto Playback?
If you are on a metered or limited data connectivity, auto playback will play spoilsport to your data usage. To avoid losing your limited data, you should disable it. Similarly, if you are browsing YouTube on a poor Internet connection, auto playback will create problems. Disabling it will prove helpful.
How to Turn off Autoplay on YouTube on Android and iPhone
To stop the autoplay of videos while scrolling on YouTube, you need to disable the muted playback in the feed setting. It’s a feature that lets you preview videos on YouTube’s home feed without actually opening the video. The videos start playing automatically as you scroll down in the feed, and the videos are muted so that they don’t embarrass you, especially if you are in a public place and just scrolling through the feed. To help you understand the preview better, the video captions are auto-enabled.
Follow these steps to turn off autoplay:
Launch the YouTube app on your Android phone or iPhone.
Tap on the profile picture icon at the top followed by Settings.
Tap on General.
You may be tempted to tap on the Autoplay option instead. However, that’s not the one that will disable autoplay on the home feed. If you do tap on it, you will see the option to Autoplay the next video. This setting helps in enabling autoplay for suggested videos so that they play automatically when you are done watching the current video.
- Inside General, tap on Muted playback in feeds and change it to Off to completely disable autoplay on the home feed. If you want, you can keep it enabled on Wi-Fi only. That way the videos will only play automatically on Wi-Fi and not on mobile data.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What happens when you turn off muted playback in the YouTube feed?
When you disable the feature, the videos won’t autoplay as you scroll down on the home feed in the YouTube app. You will need to tap on the video to play it, and it will play in the normal mode.
2. Do Autoplay videos get added to watch history?
Yes. If you watch the video for more than three seconds, it gets added to your watch history. And if you decide to watch it in the future, the video will start playing from the same position where you stopped watching it while in the preview mode. Find out how to pause and clear YouTube watch history.
3. Can you keep Autoplay enabled on Wi-Fi only?
Yes. If you only want to disable auto preview on mobile data, that’s possible. Simply select Wi-Fi only in the above settings.
4. Why is muted playback in the feed not showing in my YouTube app?
Firstly, verify whether you have followed the correct steps mentioned above. In the earlier versions, the Muted Playback in feed option was directly available under YouTube Settings instead of going to “Settings -> General,” so check there as well.
Apart from that, this feature works on the following YouTube app versions only:
- Android (Premium) – Version 13.10+Android (Free) – Version 13.30+iPhone – Version 13.35+
Note: the feature isn’t available on iPad.
Wrapping Up
Now that you have stopped YouTube videos from playing while you were scrolling, you can also learn how to cast YouTube videos from phone to PC, view subtitles, watch YouTube videos offline, and much more. However, everything should be used in limitation. If you are addicted to YouTube, find out how to spend less time on YouTube.
Mehvish is a tech lover from Kashmir. With a degree in computer engineering, she’s always been happy to help anyone who finds technology challenging. She’s been writing about technology for over six years, and her favorite topics include how-to guides, explainers, tips and tricks for Android, iOS/iPadOS, Windows, social media, and web apps.
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