Turn OFF Facebook's Video Auto-play - Save your data plan

If you are a Facebook user and travel with your laptop, or tablet or you just use Facebook on your smart phone you may have noticed that Facebook is automatically playing any videos that are posted.  Not just those videos you want to see but all of the videos in your News Feed including Ads.  That is not usually a problem but if you are connected to a cell phone network through your phone or through a hotspot, you are paying for all that video data being sent over the network to your device(s).  You may have noticed that your phone bill has increased lately.

This is called Auto-play on Facebook and you can turn that off or at least restrict it to only play when you are not connected to a cell network.  I will show you how for 3 devices - a Windows laptop, an iPad / iPhone, and an Android tablet.

First lets talk about Windows - This probably will likely work on a Mac, with Safari, but I haven't got a Mac to try it on.

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1.  Launch your browser - I have used Internet Explorer

2.  Sign in to Facebook.

3.  In Facebook there are a group of almost invisible icons to the right of "Find Friends"

4.  Click on the far right icon (see picture) then select :Settings"

5.  On the bottom left - click on Videos and then turn off Auto-play Videos

Second,  Android (Tablet or Smart Phone) 

The video can be changed within the Facebook App

1. Launch your Facebook App.

2. There are 3 control buttons in Android - Back, Home and Settings

3. Touch the "Settings" control

4. Then touch the Settings gear that appears

5.  Touch Video Auto-play 

6.  You can now select "On", "Wi-Fi only", or "Off"  (I recommend "Off" especially if you are using a hotspot)

Third on the Apple iPAD / iPhone

In IOS there is no control within the App itself all of the controls are done in "Settings"  Do not launch the Facebook app.

1.  Touch the Settings Icon.

2.  Scroll down to Facebook on the left (select it)

3.  Under the Facebook Icon you will see "Settings" (select it)

4.  Touch "Auto-play"

5.  Select "On", "Wi-Fi only", or "Off"  (again I recommend "Off")