1621825 - Videos do not autoplay unless WIFI is connected

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1647779

(GeckoView :: Media, defect, P1)

Description

[:severin Rudie]

STR:

• Start GeckoView Example
• From settings, enable "allow autoplay"
• Turn off device WIFI
• Load https://videojs.github.io/autoplay-tests/plain/attr/autoplay.html

Expected:
Video autoplays

Actual:
Video does not autoplay

Note:
Works as expected with WIFI enabled

App: GeckoView Example from https://firefox-ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/tasks/index/gecko.v2.mozilla-central.nightly.latest.mobile/android-api-16-opt && Fenix 4.0.0
Test website: https://videojs.github.io/autoplay-tests/plain/attr/autoplay.html
Device: Pixel 2, Android 10

Comment 1

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Yeah, there's some other stuff[1] that comes into play when you're on a cellular connection. We could probably expose this as yet another runtime setting, I guess, but I'm not sure anyone is going to want behavior different than what we have now.

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/7d0c94a0e9a9fe1f83553f49b10128567d21709d/dom/html/HTMLMediaElement.cpp#2766

Comment 2

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Because this bug's Severity has not been changed from the default since it was filed, and it's Priority is P3 (Backlog,) indicating it has been triaged, the bug's Severity is being updated to S3 (normal.)

Comment 3

[Amedyne Moya [:amoya]]

Is this a related issue?: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4002

Comment 4

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Attachment: fenix_autoplay.png

Hi, Snorp,
Do you know where I can find the "allow autoplay" in the settings page? When I enter autoplay setting on Firefox Android Nightly, all options are related to block autoplay. Or does different version Fenix have different setting?

Comment 5

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

(In reply to amoya from comment #3)

Is this a related issue?: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4002

This is related with bug1647779.

Comment 6

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

(In reply to James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him) from comment #1)

Yeah, there's some other stuff[1] that comes into play when you're on a cellular connection. We could probably expose this as yet another runtime setting, I guess, but I'm not sure anyone is going to want behavior different than what we have now.

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/7d0c94a0e9a9fe1f83553f49b10128567d21709d/dom/html/HTMLMediaElement.cpp#2766

In addition, if we've allowed the page to autoplay, then we won't check if user is using the cellular connection or not, we would preload enough amount of data to trigger autoplay.

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/c6676771df58c6e0098574bc6b11517acbf264cf/dom/html/HTMLMediaElement.cpp#2949-2952

Comment 7

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Hi,
May I ask where do you enable autoplay? From the image I uploaded in comment4, I can't find enable autoplay option.
Thank you.

Comment 8

[:severin Rudie]

Hey Alastor,

Sorry about the late reply, I was out for a few days.

There's no option in Fenix to allow autoplay over a cellular connection. The top radio button will allow autoplay over WIFI, but that's the closest we could do without support in GeckoView.

If you're trying to test GV changes, I imagine the easiest way would be to expose the option in the GeckoView reference app and test it there. Hope that helps!

Comment 9

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

So is this bug a request asking? To ask GV support allowing autoplay all the time? Because as you said, current GV doesn't have an option to allow all autoplay.

Comment 10

[:severin Rudie]

Yes. Last I was aware, we wanted Fenix to expose an "always allow autoplay" option. This bug tracks the required GV work.

FYI I'm not on the Fenix team anymore, I don't know whether or not they've prioritized this feature.

Comment 11

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Okay, if so, they would be a GV bug, they should expose a new option to always allow autoplay media on Gecko. Move this bug to GeckoView component.

Comment 12

[vzare]

Hi all, what is the process for getting this bug prioritized?

Comment 13

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

I am not able to reproduce this on 3G or Edge networks. The video does autoplay for me, I just need to wait a bit longer, especially on Edge (at first, I even had thought the bug actually reproduces, but then I discovered it does not).

Device: Samsung Galaxy S8, Android 9
App: GeckoView Example 82.0.20200901094542

Comment 14

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

Re-opening this, as this issue was brought to my attention. When I tried reproducing it in GVE, it did not repro on WiFi, but did on cellular (and I waited good 10 minutes), so there might be something to investigate here after all.

Comment 15

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

...and (possibly after a rebase??), I am not able to reproduce again. Closing this for now

Comment 16

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

Some further investigation revealed that this bug reproduces only when GVE is installed from an APK downloaded from Taskcluster (I use android-aarch64-opt builds) and does not reproduce on debug builds.

There might be a timing issue here related to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1647779 , considering the opt builds are faster than the debug builds.

As for exposing options - GV doesn't check the type of connection at all. GV has three options: not play anything, play only video and play everything, and it should just play regardless of the connection type. So we actually already have the requested option.

I am duping this bug on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1647779

Comment 17

[Arturo Mejia [:amejia]]

We experiencing a regression of this issue on GV 88.0a1-20210302034602

Comment 18

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

The other bug is not fixed so I expect this is still a dupe.

Comment 19

[Arturo Mejia [:amejia]]

It was working on previous versions of GV for example in stable GV 86.0-20210222142601 and on gv beta GV: 87.0-20210307185839 is working. Maybe was a site effect from another change.

Comment 21

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Moving some media bugs to the new GeckoView::Media component.