How to turn off sound for auto-playing videos on Facebook

In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll tell you about a hidden setting that lets you force the Facebook mobile app to autoplay all videos and Stories in your News Feed with audio off.

Sound muted for a video in Facebook app

Have you noticed that the videos in your Facebook Home Feed do not autoplay silently but have their sound turned on? This can be very annoying if you are browsing Facebook at night or in places like a library and a random video on the timeline starts playing with loud audio.

Here’s how to change this behavior and turn off sound from auto-playing videos. Conversely, if you want the videos to autoplay with sound so you don’t have to tap the little loudspeaker icon, you can do that as well.

Change the audio setting for auto-playing videos on Facebook

  1. Launch the Facebook app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone.
  2. Tap the hamburger menu icon.
  3. Tap Settings & privacy at the bottom of the list, then choose Settings.
  4. Now, select Media from the list of options.
  5. Look at the Autoplay section and turn off or on the switches next to “Videos Start with Sound” and “Stories Start with Sound” to disable or enable automatic sound for any videos that appear on your Facebook home page.
Turn off Videos and Stories Start with Sound in Facebook app

If you disable the sound for Home Feed videos, you will need to tap a video to hear the audio. With sound enabled for these videos, clips will begin playing with audio on, and sound will fade in and out as you scroll through your timeline.

Remember that you can also control video volume with the sound settings of your mobile device. To override the setting and keep videos silent, simply set your iPhone to silent. Secondly, autoplay stops if your device’s battery is low. So, when that happens, the sound will obviously be muted.

These options are unavailable on Facebook’s desktop interface. However, if you click your profile picture on Facebook Web and go to Settings & privacy > Settings > Media, you will see a Quiet mode option, which, if turned on, will force the videos to start at a lower volume.

Quiet Mode turned on in Facebook media settings

If you don’t want videos in your News Feed to play automatically in the first place, be sure to check out our tutorials explaining how to change the video autoplay setting in your Facebook app.

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