Facebook and Instagram are just two of many social media sites that autoplay videos as you scroll through the content while on your news feed.
Autoplay video has its advantages, but when you think of the high data consumed by most videos you might want to disable it, especially if you don’t have access to a Wi-Fi network.
Also, your eyes might be exposed to content that contains violence or something you find offensive, such as pornography, manslaughter or any inappropriate video of such.
Unfortunately, Instagram’s mobile apps for Android and iOS do not include a dedicated setting for blocking autoplay videos, in contrast to Facebook and Twitter.
While Instagram does not provide this option, you can prevent high data consumption by switching on “Data Saver” in the app’s settings.
As of this writing, the Instagram Data Saver feature doesn’t seem to stop videos from automatically playing, but it does reduce the quality of the videos.
Therefore, let’s dive into how to turn on Data Saver for the Instagram app.
Step 1: (On your smartphone) go to your profile.
Step 2: Tap the hamburger icon on the top right and tap “Settings.”
Step 3: Tap “Account,” then “Cellular Data Use” or you might see “Mobile Data Use”.
Step 4: Now toggle the “Use Less Data” to switch it on. And you are done.
It’s unfortunate that Instagram doesn’t give its users the option to disable autoplay for all videos, but at least they can do so when using mobile data.
People who cannot stand autoplay can, thankfully, use the Instagram website instead, where autoplay is not enabled by default. That’s not ideal, but it’s the only way to permanently disable Instagram autoplay videos.
Autoplay will be disabled but keep in mind that when turned off, you will always have to manually play a video by clicking on it. Note that you’ll have to change tablet and mobile settings separately because they aren’t saved.
