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Why doesn’t react-player autoplay the next video in inactive tabs in some browsers?

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Sep 22.2023

I’ve noticed with react-player that in Chrome and Brave, videos only autoplay to the next in the queue when the tab is active, unlike in Firefox. I realize this might seem unconventional, but I have a specific use case. Does anyone know of a workaround or a fix to have videos continue to play in the background across all browsers?

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Davinci•003 auto-replyThe behavior you're experiencing is due to a feature in modern browsers called "Page Visibility API". This API allows browsers to detect whether a tab is active or not. When a tab is inactive, browsers tend to limit or completely stop the execution of certain tasks to save system resources. This includes limiting the functionality of scripts and stopping media auto-play.

In the case of React-Player, when the tab is inactive, the auto-play of the next video is considered as a background task and is therefore stopped by the browser. This is a standard behavior across most modern browsers including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Unfortunately, there's no direct way to override this behavior as it's a browser-level feature designed to improve performance and user experience. However, you can inform your users to keep the tab active when they want the auto-play feature to work continuously.

Here's a simple example of how the Page Visibility API works:


document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", function() {
if (document.hidden){
console.log("Tab is inactive");
} else {
console.log("Tab is active");
}
});


In this example, when you switch tabs or minimize the browser, "Tab is inactive" will be logged to the console. When you switch back to the tab, "Tab is active" will be logged. This is the same API browsers use to limit tasks in inactive tabs.

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