1880400 - `lock-autoplay-until-in-foreground = true` no longer works in Firefox 123.0

Status: UNCONFIRMED

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

Description

[MrGoatsy]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:123.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/123.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to about:config
2. Change lock-autoplay-until-in-foreground to true

Actual results:

It automatically plays Youtube tabs opened in the background.

Expected results:

It should not have automatically started playing the Youtube videos.

Comment 1

[Christian Koop]

I can confirm this issue is also happening on Manjaro Linux (Firefox v122.0) with some YouTube tabs I open in the background.

Didn't find this issue at first, maybe you have a typo in the title and reproduction steps and mean media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground? (missing the b at the start)

Comment 2

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

Hi MrGoatsy, Christian, thanks for the reports. Unfortunately, I am not able to reproduce this. Does this happen randomly or constantly with some web page?

One way to find out what's wrong is to get the program logs directly. Can you follow the instructions below to help us get the logs?

1. Install Firefox profiler: https://profiler.firefox.com/
2. Open Firefox, and go to about:logging page
3. Click Logging preset and choose Custom
4. Clear the New log modules text field and enter Autoplay:5, then click Set Log Modules
5. Click Start Logging
6. Open a new tab and repeat the steps that produce the autoplay problems. Once you reproduce the issue, close the tab, then go back to about:logging page and click Stop Logging
7. The Firefox Profiler should launch itself automatically.
8. Click Upload Local Profile, you can choose to download the profile and upload it here as an attachment, or upload it and share the link here.

The tutorial to get the logs is here: https://paul.cx/public/about-logging-presentation.webm. Once the logs are obtained, we can have a further look into this issue.

Comment 3

[Christian Koop]

I've created a blank Firefox profile without any changes to it (other then profiler setup).
I wasn't sure what data might be included + maybe it helps having a more "clean setup".

The bug is not that easy to reproduce because it only happens some times - Not sure if they got less frequent in Firefox 123 but it's still there.
I essentially just went to the YouTube start page and start opening random videos in a new tab (by pressing the mouse wheel) until one just starts playing.
You don't have to "spam open" new tabs to encounter bug tho.

Around 1m16s I focus the tab where the ad started playing although the tab wasn't focused by me yet:
https://share.firefox.dev/3wyH2tr

Comment 4

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

(In reply to Christian Koop from comment #3)

Around 1m16s I focus the tab where the ad started playing although the tab wasn't focused by me yet:
https://share.firefox.dev/3wyH2tr

Hey Alastor, could you take a look?

Comment 5

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

Set this to S4 for now.

Comment 6

[Christian Koop]

A little update on this issue (on Firefox v127.0):
I think the bug still exists but changed it's nature to something that might be easier to find/reproduce.

1. Watching a YouTube Video
2. Middle-Mouse-Click another video (open in new tab)
3. While the new tab is still loading, switch the "active" tab to another one
4. The newly opened tab will auto play although it never received focus/activeness

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

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