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Autoplay Is Now The Default For YouTube Videos

In testing since late last year, YouTube now serves desktop viewers a series of continuously playing videos.

Martin Beck on March 23, 2015 at 8:54 pm

Add another platform to the autoplay bandwagon. YouTube, which had been testing the feature since late last year, has now enabled autoplay for all desktop users.

That means after watching a video on Google’s network, you will be served a related video based on your viewing history and that video will start playing automatically. The experience is different than Facebook’s autoplaying News Feed video, or Twitter’s current autoplay experiment, since people don’t watch video within YouTube via a social stream, but Google’s motive is no doubt similar: to boost video views.

Facebook, which now claims more than 3 billion video views a day, is seen to be barging into YouTube’s territory. Although YouTube hasn’t recently released a similar stat — in 2012 it reported 4 billion views a day — adding autoplay could be considered a competitive response.

Users can disable YouTube’s autoplay feature by clicking the toggle button in the upper right-hand corner of the video page: