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Twitter for iOS and twitter.com to start autoplaying videos today—here’s how to turn it off

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 16, 2015

You could say I'm not a big fan of intrusive autoplay videos in apps, not to mention those pesky autoplay video ads on some websites. With that in mind, I was taken aback when Twitter announced today adding this very feature to its iPhone and iPad application and the web interface.

Now when you stumble upon a tweet with an embedded Vine, animated GIF or a clip in Twitter's native format, it will begin to play back automatically.

It's all part of the grand plan to shove advertising down our throat though Twitter would have us believe it's trying to make our lives easier so we could “keep up with the action without missing a tweet and get a better sense of what’s been shared instantly.”

Because autoplay videos suck your cellular data, this feature is a major concern in this age of non-unlimited plans. True, Twitter promises to opt out of autoplay anyone who's on a high-rate data plan, but I'd rather trust my instincts and revert back to the old-school click-to-play experience.

Thankfully, there's an easy way to do just that.

How to embed Tweets and Twitter videos on your website

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 15, 2023

Adding tweets and Twitter videos to your website can add an interactive and engaging element to your content. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the simple process of embedding tweets and Twitter videos onto your blog or website, allowing you to enhance your content and engage your audience.

How to add Twitter and Facebook share widgets to Control Center

Sébastien Page ∙ January 8, 2014

A few days ago, I wrote a post showing how to bring Twitter and Facebook share widgets back to the Notification Center using an app called Share Widgets for iOS 7. In this post, I noted that Apple probably didn't add these share widgets in the iOS 7 Notification Center because that's not the right place for them. When you think about it, sharing something on Twitter or Facebook has nothing to do with notifications.

A more natural fit for Twitter and Facebook share widgets is Control Center. With an array of tweaks now being developed for Control Center, one in particular grabbed my attention as it allowed me to do what I really wanted from the beginning: add Twitter and Facebook share widgets to Control Center.

This tweak, some of you may have already guessed, it CCToggles...

How to embed Vine clips in web pages

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

Twitter's Vine is fine for random sharing of six-second videos and today they issued an interesting new update promising to make embedding own or someone else's clips easy as a pie. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

The new version won't let you just grab an embed code in-app. For reasons beyond our comprehension, the software sends you to a special web page where the embed code can be created.

It's not the end of the world, but the solution is cumbersome and inelegant, though it works. To start injecting those beautiful Vines into your blog posts, web pages, email newsletters or pretty much into any other other type of HTML content, just follow our quick guide and you should be fine...

How to Tweet and Update Facebook Using Siri

Oliver Haslam ∙ October 17, 2011

Apple's unique selling point for the iPhone 4S is Siri, a digital assistant that knows what you mean and how to answer your questions.

For all Siri's polish and ability to take real language and turn it into emails and text messages, there is one glaring omission from its repertoire, and that's the ability to tweet or update your Facebook status.

With Twitter now very much built into the fabric of iOS, it has been a surprise to many that Apple didn't give Siri any hooks into the world of 140 characters and less. But fear not, for those of us that are addicted to Twitter can now send messages using Siri, and it's super easy to set up...