[javascript] How to handle "Uncaught (in promise) DOMException: play() failed because the user didn't interact with the document first." on Desktop with Chrome 66?

I'm getting the error message..

Uncaught (in promise) DOMException: play() failed because the user didn't interact with the document first.

..when trying to play video on desktop using Chrome version 66.

I did find an ad that began playback automatically on a website however using the following HTML:

<video
    title="Advertisement"
    webkit-playsinline="true"
    playsinline="true"
    style="background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); position: absolute; width: 640px; height: 360px;"
    src="http://ds.serving-sys.com/BurstingRes/Site-2500/Type-16/1ff26f6a-aa27-4b30-a264-df2173c79623.mp4"
    autoplay=""></video>

So is by-passing Chrome v66's autoplay blocker really as easy as just adding the webkit-playsinline="true", playsinline="true", and autoplay="" attributes to the <video> element? Are there any negative consequences to this?

Type Chrome://flags in the address-bar

Search: Autoplay

Autoplay Policy

Policy used when deciding if audio or video is allowed to autoplay.

– Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android

Set this to "No user gesture is required"

Relaunch Chrome and you don't have to change any code

Answering the question at hand...
No it's not enough to have these attributes, to be able to autoplay a media with audio you need to have an user-gesture registered on your document.

But, this limitation is very weak: if you did receive this user-gesture on the parent document, and your video got loaded from an iframe, then you could play it...

So take for instance this fiddle, which is only

<video src="myvidwithsound.webm" autoplay=""></video>

At first load, and if you don't click anywhere, it will not run, because we don't have any event registered yet.
But once you click the "Run" button, then the parent document (jsfiddle.net) did receive an user-gesture, and now the video plays, even though it is technically loaded in a different document.

But the following snippet, since it requires you to actually click the Run code snippet button, will autoplay.

<video src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/22/Volcano_Lava_Sample.webm/Volcano_Lava_Sample.webm.360p.webm" autoplay=""></video>

This means that your ad was probably able to play because you did provide an user-gesture to the main page.

Now, note that Safari and Mobile Chrome have stricter rules than that, and will require you to actually trigger at least once the play() method programmatically on the <video> or <audio> element from the user-event handler itself.

btn.onclick = e => {_x000D_
  // mark our MediaElement as user-approved_x000D_
  vid.play().then(()=>vid.pause());_x000D_
  // now we can do whatever we want at any time with this MediaElement_x000D_
  setTimeout(()=> vid.play(), 3000);_x000D_
};

<button id="btn">play in 3s</button>_x000D_
<video_x000D_
  src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/22/Volcano_Lava_Sample.webm/Volcano_Lava_Sample.webm.360p.webm" id="vid"></video>

And if you don't need the audio, then simply don't attach it to your media, a video with only a video track is also allowed to autoplay, and will reduce your user's bandwidth usage.

Extend the DOM Element, Handle the Error, and Degrade Gracefully

Below I use the prototype function to wrap the native DOM play function, grab its promise, and then degrade to a play button if the browser throws an exception. This extension addresses the shortcoming of the browser and is plug-n-play in any page with knowledge of the target element(s).

// JavaScript
// Wrap the native DOM audio element play function and handle any autoplay errors
Audio.prototype.play = (function(play) {
return function () {
  var audio = this,
      args = arguments,
      promise = play.apply(audio, args);
  if (promise !== undefined) {
    promise.catch(_ => {
      // Autoplay was prevented. This is optional, but add a button to start playing.
      var el = document.createElement("button");
      el.innerHTML = "Play";
      el.addEventListener("click", function(){play.apply(audio, args);});
      this.parentNode.insertBefore(el, this.nextSibling)
    });
  }
};
})(Audio.prototype.play);

// Try automatically playing our audio via script. This would normally trigger and error.
document.getElementById('MyAudioElement').play()

<!-- HTML -->
<audio id="MyAudioElement" autoplay>
  <source src="https://www.w3schools.com/html/horse.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
  <source src="https://www.w3schools.com/html/horse.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
  Your browser does not support the audio element.
</audio>

Chrome needs a user interaction for the video to be autoplayed or played via js (video.play()). But the interaction can be of any kind, in any moment. If you just click random on the page, the video will autoplay. I resolved then, adding a button (only on chrome browsers) that says "enable video autoplay". The button does nothing, but just clicking it, is the required user interaction for any further video.

To make the autoplay on html 5 elements work after the chrome 66 update you just need to add the muted property to the video element.

So your current video HTML

<video_x000D_
    title="Advertisement"_x000D_
    webkit-playsinline="true"_x000D_
    playsinline="true"_x000D_
    style="background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); position: absolute; width: 640px; height: 360px;"_x000D_
    src="http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4"_x000D_
    autoplay=""></video>

Just needs muted="muted"

<video_x000D_
    title="Advertisement"_x000D_
    style="background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); position: absolute; width: 640px; height: 360px;"_x000D_
    src="http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4"_x000D_
    autoplay="true"_x000D_
    muted="muted"></video>

I believe the chrome 66 update is trying to stop tabs creating random noise on the users tabs. That's why the muted property make the autoplay work again.

According to the new browser policy, the user must interact with DOM first before playing the Audio element.

If you want to play the media on page load then you can simply add autoplay property to audio element in HTML like this

<video id="video" src="./music.mp4" autoplay>

or if you don't want to do autoplay then you can handle this using Javascript. Since the autoplay property is set to true, media will be played, we can simply mute the media.

document.getElementById('video').autoplay = true;
document.getElementById('video').muted = true; 

Imp: Now Whenever you play the media don't forget to turn the muted property to false. Like this

document.getElementById('video').muted = false; 
document.getElementById('video').play();

Or you can also show a simple popup where the user will click the allow button in the modal. So he interacts with DOM first, then you don't need anything to do

1. Open chrome://settings/content/sound
2. Setting No user gesture is required
3. Relaunch Chrome

You should have added muted attribute inside your videoElement for your code work as expected. Look bellow ..

<video id="IPcamerastream" muted="muted" autoplay src="videoplayback%20(1).mp4" width="960" height="540"></video>

Don' t forget to add a valid video link as source

I encountered a similar error with while attempting to play an audio file. At first, it was working, then it stopped working when I started using ChangeDetector's markForCheck method in the same function to trigger a re-render when a promise resolves (I had an issue with view rendering).

When I changed the markForCheck to detectChanges it started working again. I really can't explain what happened, I just thought of dropping this here, perhaps it would help someone.

In my case, I had to do this

 // Initialization in the dom
 // Consider the muted attribute
 <audio id="notification" src="path/to/sound.mp3" muted></audio>


 // in the js code unmute the audio once the event happened
 document.getElementById('notification').muted = false;
 document.getElementById('notification').play();

The best solution i found out is to mute the video

HTML

<video loop muted autoplay id="videomain">
  <source src="videoname.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

I had some issues playing on Android Phone. After few tries I found out that when Data Saver is on there is no auto play:

There is no autoplay if Data Saver mode is enabled. If Data Saver mode is enabled, autoplay is disabled in Media settings.

Source

For me (in Angular project) this code helped:

In HTML you should add autoplay muted

In JS/TS

playVideo() {
    const media = this.videoplayer.nativeElement;
    media.muted = true; // without this line it's not working although I have "muted" in HTML
    media.play();
}

Try to use mousemove event lisentner

var audio = document.createElement("AUDIO")
document.body.appendChild(audio);
audio.src = "./audio/rain.m4a"

document.body.addEventListener("mousemove", function () {
    audio.play()
})