How To Disable The New Autoplay Feature On YouTube

YouTube is rolling out a new autoplay feature. It’s a lot like the autoplay feature you see on Hulu where the next suggested video is automatically played after 3 seconds if you do not cancel or pause it. When YouTube first started auto-playing videos today I thought I had maybe clicked on a playlist. It’s still rolling out at the moment and some of you might not be seeing. It’s useful no doubt but you might not know it can be disabled because the switch that turns it off comes after an ad. The feature has been available to select users since 2014 when it was in the test phase. Here’s how it works and how you can turn it off.

When a  video finishes playing, you will see the following overlay appear on it. It runs a three second timer before the next video is automatically played. If you click the ‘Cancel’ button, autoplay will be paused for that video alone. If you find you don’t like the autoplay feature because you accidentally end up watching an hour of YouTube videos you can turn it off. If you click the close button at the top right of the overlay it will disappear leaving you with thumbnails for suggested videos. 
At the bottom (or the right depending on the size of the player you’ve selected) is an Autoplay button that you can flip to turn the feature off. The option is almost hidden and kind of looks like one of those ads that are pretending not to be ads so you’ll click on them. Turning Autoplay off will turn it off for every single video.

We also noticed a brand new button next to the play/pause button on the player. Normally, this button can be seen if you’re playing a playlist but it is now appearing on all videos. It lets you skip to the next suggested video.

Not seeing these options yet? Wait a few days and it will roll out to everyone soon.