Can you autoplay HTML5 videos on the iPad?

by

iOS 10 update

The ban on autoplay has been lifted as of iOS 10 – but with some restrictions (e.g. A can be autoplayed if there is no audio track).

To see a full list of these restrictions, see the official docs: https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/

iOS 9 and before

As of iOS 6.1, it is no longer possible to auto-play videos on the iPad.

My assumption as to why they’ve disabled the auto-play feature?

Well, as many device owners have data usage/bandwidth limits on their devices, I think Apple felt that the user themselves should decide when they initiate bandwidth usage.

After a bit of research I found the following extract in the Apple documentation in regard to auto-play on iOS devices to confirm my assumption:

“Apple has made the decision to disable the automatic playing of video
on iOS devices, through both script and attribute implementations.

In Safari, on iOS (for all devices, including iPad), where the user may be on a cellular network and be charged per data unit, preload and
auto-play are disabled. No data is loaded until the user initiates it.” – Apple documentation.

Here is a separate warning featured on the Safari HTML5 Reference page about why embedded media cannot be played in Safari on iOS:

Warning: To prevent unsolicited downloads over cellular networks at
the user’s expense, embedded media cannot be played automatically in
Safari on iOS—the user always initiates playback. A controller is
automatically supplied on iPhone or iPod touch once playback in
initiated, but for iPad you must either set the controls attribute or
provide a controller using JavaScript.

What this means (in terms of code) is that Javascript’s play() and load() methods are inactive until the user initiates playback, unless the play() or load() method is triggered by user action (e.g. a click event).

Basically, a user-initiated play button works, but
an onLoad="play()" event does not.

For example, this would play the movie: 

<input type="button" value="Play" onclick="document.myMovie.play()">

Whereas the following would do nothing on iOS: 

<body onload="document.myMovie.play()">

More Related Contents:

  1. how to get source of a page
  2. Slide down button to show text HTML CSS
  3. Should IBOutlets be strong or weak under ARC?
  4. Proper way to exit iPhone application?
  5. Change Active Menu Item on Page Scroll?
  6. How to adjust the column width of jqgrid AFTER the data is loaded?
  7. Can I get div’s background-image url?
  8. UIButton inside a view that has a UITapGestureRecognizer
  9. How do you add multi-line text to a UIButton?
  10. Clearing NSUserDefaults
  11. Cocoa error 3840 using JSON (iOS)
  12. Proper practice for subclassing UIView?
  13. How do I create a round cornered UILabel on the iPhone?
  14. Is there a jquery event that fires when a new node is inserted into the dom?
  15. Setting equal heights for div’s with jQuery
  16. HTML Table to JSON
  17. HTML Attribute rel Errors using fancyBox
  18. Select elements without any class [duplicate]
  19. JQuery data selector not updating with .data
  20. Find all unchecked checkboxes in jQuery
  21. UIBarButtonItem: target-action not working?
  22. iOS 7 round framed button
  23. How to create a diagonal line within a table cell?
  24. Is it possible to detect that your iOS app is running on an iPad mini at runtime?
  25. Show/ Hide Table Column with colspan using jQuery
  26. What’s faster for including scripts, using CDN (Google) or storing them locally in website’s root?
  27. Disable select options based on value *through the HTML only!*
  28. Html5 drag and drop on svg element
  29. Find UIAlertView without having reference to it iOS 7
  30. Can jQuery selectors be used with DOM mutation observers?

Leave a Comment