1514615 - Autoplay permission for local media file is confusing

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Description

[Daniel Barkalow]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0

Steps to reproduce:

Set media.autoplay.default to 2 and media.autoplay.ask-permission to true.
Go to a file URL for an mp4 file. This used the built-in player, as desired.


Actual results:

A dialog appeared asking whether I want to allow the file to autoplay, with no ability to remember the answer. If I say "Allow", it starts playing; if I click on the video, it starts playing (without removing the dialog); if I say "Don't Allow", the dialog goes away, and the video plays if I click on it.


Expected results:

If it's (a) not part of an HTML page with scripts or something like that, (b) not going to play the file without interaction, and (c) not going to remember my answer, then it should just not play the video automatically.

Either the built-in player UI should notice that autoplay would require permission and not attempt it, or the media playback should notice that it's a stand-alone file and deny autoplay. Less natural, but possible, would be a separate setting to disable autoplay of stand-alone files.

Comment 1

[Stefan [:StefanG_QA]]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0 (20181206201918)

I've tested this report on Ubuntu 18.04 x64 using the latest Nightly, Beta and Fx release builds. When changing the mentioned pref and trying to play an mp4 file I can see the option to "Remember this decision". For me when I select "Don't Allow" the video does not start playing until I "Allow" the permission. 

Could you please retest this using the latest Fx release and latest Nightly build (https://nightly.mozilla.org/) and report back the results? When doing this, please use a new clean Firefox profile, maybe even safe mode, to eliminate custom settings as a possible cause (https://goo.gl/PNe90E). 

If you are still able to reproduce the issue please provide a screenshot of the permission dialog or a short video showing the issue.

Comment 2

[Daniel Barkalow]

In the latest Nightly "build 66.0a1 (2018-12-20) (64-bit)", with a new Firefox profile and only the two custom settings I mentioned originally, setting "media.autoplay.default" to 2 and "media.autoplay.ask-permission" to true doesn't seem to block anything (videos in file URLs play automatically, embedded youtube videos play when the page loads); is there some other setting needed to make this effective?

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Alastor, can you clarify what's going on here and triage further? Based on the mention of a recent nightly, I wonder if it's a regression from bug 1512283 or something.

Comment 4

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

We're going to remove the autoplay doorhanger in bug1513039, so mark doorhanger related issues as WONTFIX.