Heads up, Facebook users, because the social network today announced some changes to its service.
Facebook will enable autoplay sound for videos in your News Feed. Previously, these videos would begin playing silently and you’d have to tap on them to turn on the sound. Now, though, the sounds of videos will fade in and out as you scroll through videos in the News Feed.
The good news is that there are a couple of ways to avoid this if you don’t want it. The first is to put your phone on silent, because Facebook says this will prevent videos from playing sound. You can also switch off the “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” in the Settings of the Facebook app.
Facebook says that it’s enabling videos in the News Feed to start playing sound because users have “come to expect sound when they volume on their device is turned on.” Some folks may found the feature annoying, though, as there will be sounds randomly coming on while you’re scrolling through your News Feed. Plus, you don’t have control over what these sounds might be, which could be inappropriate for the place or time. Thankfully, Facebook will let you disable the feature, so be sure to keep an eye out for the aforementioned toggle in your Facebook app.
In other news, Facebook is rolling out a larger preview of vertical videos in your News Feed on Android and iOS, as well as a feature that’ll let you begin watching a video and then minimize it to a picture-in-picture view so that you can keep watching while you continue scrolling through your News Feed. Android users will also be able to continue watching video after exiting the Facebook app.
Facebook also announced today plans to launch a new video app on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung Smart TV. This video app will let you watch videos from your friends or Pages that you’ve liked, recommended videos, and top live videos from around the world. Facebook plans to launch its video app on more platforms in the future.
