It was back in September when we first heard that Facebook was silently testing autoplay feature for native videos. Now the world’s largest social network is rolling out the feature on mobile. Native Facebook videos will now autoplay on mobile devices, a move that’s aimed at increasing interaction with videos uploaded to Facebook. Since the videos will automatically play in-line as users scroll, they won’t be locked behind a play button as before. Users won’t have to stop scrolling if a video catches their eye and tap on the play button to watch that particular video.
As previously mentioned, the feature is only limited to native videos, meaning those uploaded to Facebook itself or Instagram. Videos uploaded to third party websites, such as YouTube, will be locked behind the play button as before and won’t play automatically. Videos playing in-line will be muted so even if the user doesn’t want to watch a video, they can keep scrolling through without getting bothered by the sound. The sound will only be activated once the user taps a video in-line, which will then expand and unmute itself. Facebook says that the feature has already been rolled out internationally to iOS and Android users, it expects that all users will have the autoplay feature in the next couple of days.
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