Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How do I stop preloading of HTML5 audio files?

more options

When I open a page that has audio tags for HTML5, it automatically downloads the files. I never use the in-browser audio player and instead download for offline listening. How do I prevent these files from being downloaded for browser playing since I have to download them a second time for my offline playing?

When I open a page that has audio tags for HTML5, it automatically downloads the files. I never use the in-browser audio player and instead download for offline listening. How do I prevent these files from being downloaded for browser playing since I have to download them a second time for my offline playing?

Valgt løsning

You can set the media.windows-media-foundation.enabled pref to false on the about:config page to disable the built-in HTML5 media player.

Les dette svaret i sammenhengen 👍 2

All Replies (7)

more options

If you type about:config into the address bar, press Enter, then accept the warning, then search for Media, you should see several prefs called "media.comething.enabled". If you switch these to false does that do what you are wanting?

more options

Not that I can figure out. For example, if I have an embedded link to a .mp3 file (say, for a podcast) using the audio tag, then firefox loads the file in the background. There is nothing in the media.*.enabled that suggests that it would stop that from happening. There is no mp3 item in that list nor is there anything about preload defaults (set to no when it is 'auto' in the html). The other settings for mp3 and flash are set to false in areas I can find.

more options

Valgt løsning

You can set the media.windows-media-foundation.enabled pref to false on the about:config page to disable the built-in HTML5 media player.

more options

Thank you! Works perfectly.

more options

How do I do this on the mac now? The previous works well for Windows.

more options

Does Firefox play MP3 files in an HTML audio tag on Mac?

A lot of other types can be disabled via one of the media prefs, but if there isn't one for files that still play and disabling media.autoplay.enabled to false also doesn't help then I don't know what else to try.

more options

I thought it did the same as I was seeing in Windows, but it seems to not do it now. The vast majority of the times I run into it I am using Windows.

Thanks for the suggestion. If it comes up, I have a place to start.