Autoplaying videos

Automatically play a video when visitors open a page.

Last updated February 6, 2025

You can upload a video to a video block and customize its playback settings to enable autoplay. This built-in option isn't available for embedded videos.

To autoplay videos hosted by other video hosts, you'll need to customize some settings with your video host and use a custom embed code to add the video to a page.

To learn more about adding videos, visit Adding videos to your site.

Before you begin

  • For the best visitor experience, only add one autoplaying video to a page. If your page has multiple autoplay videos, they’ll all start playing at the same time when a page loads (unless you're using Vimeo).
  • Video banners may play on mobile devices, but other videos won't autoplay on mobile.
  • Video banners and .gif images automatically play when the page loads.

Browsers can prevent autoplay

Current versions of all supported browsers prevent autoplay to some degree to protect their users' experience. In most browsers, visitors can change their settings to turn on autoplay.

Before adding an autoplay video to your site, review documentation for common browsers to learn if, how, and when they prevent autoplay. For example:

  • Chrome prevents autoplay for videos with sound. For more details, review Chrome's autoplay policy.
  • Safari and Firefox also prevent autoplay for videos with sound, but visitors can customize their settings. For more details, visit Safari and Firefox's documentation.

Set an uploaded video to autoplay

You can upload a video to a video block and customize the block's settings to make the video autoplay. To do this:

  1. Add a video block and click the pencil icon on the block.
  2. Click Add a video, then click Upload.
  3. After the video uploads, scroll down to video settings and switch the Mute toggle on. Mute needs to be enabled before you can enable autoplay.
  4. Switch the Autoplay toggle on.

This option is only available in video blocks. It's not possible to set videos uploaded elsewhere to autoplay.

Get the autoplay code for other videos

You can use embed code to set videos hosted elsewhere to autoplay. Follow the steps below to customize the embed code from each supported service:

  • YouTube - After copying and pasting the embed code from YouTube, add ?autoplay=1 to the end of the URL in the code. If your embed URL already includes a ?, add &autoplay=1 at the end of the URL instead.
  • Vimeo - After copying and pasting the embed code from Vimeo, add ?autoplay=1 to the end of the URL in the code. For detailed instructions, visit Vimeo's documentation

For other services, contact the video host for specific steps. When you have the embed code, copy and paste it into the correct field in the video editor. For more help, visit Embedding videos from third-party services on your site.

Background videos autoplay by default

Background videos always play on a loop without sound, so they work differently than other videos. To learn more, visit Adding a background video.

Autoplay in Index galleries (version 7.0 only)

If your site is on version 7.0, index pages support autoplay videos on gallery pages in these template families:

Grid index pages don't support videos in the thumbnail grid, but you can add autoplay videos to gallery pages in the Index.

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