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Blocking autoplay videos on Macworld

I hate ’em, you hate ’em; even the writers hate ’em as well.  I finally got fed up enough to figure out how to completely block the autoplaying videos on the Macworld website.

Most instructions tell you to disable Flash, but I don’t even have Flash installed on my main computer (outside of the player embedded in Chrome, but I primarily use Safari).  It turns out that the Macworld website will then load a video player from Brightcove, so you have to block that too.

I’m using AdBlock, so I click its toolbar icon, choose Options, and go to “Manually Edit Your Filters”.  Click “Edit” and insert this text:

! Block autoplay videos on Macworld/PCWorld (need to block Brightcove as well)
www.macworld.com##DIV[class="video-wrapper small-player"]
www.pcworld.com##DIV[class="video-wrapper small-player"]
players.brightcove.net

That seems to be the lowest common division; higher level entities are named “how-to” or “security” or some such. Might as well get PCWorld while we’re in there. Don’t forget to click “Save”, and you’re done. (Also don’t forget to pay for AdBlock; I’m doing that right now…)

3 Comments

  1. Bob Mathews
    Bob Mathews September 21, 2016

    Thank you! I use ABP too, in Firefox on Windows. Had to add the 3 exceptions one at a time, but worked like a champ.

  2. Koitenshin
    Koitenshin March 22, 2017

    Thank you very much for this. I was getting so tired of the PCWorld videos.

  3. Suliman6
    Suliman6 May 24, 2017

    Very handy and very easy … thanks! The continuous play even after scrolling down the page drove me crazy!

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