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Comment by fessa | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't look like it works on mobile though.

It likely can't - videos are enforced as tap-to-play on iPhones, no matter what.

Which is good in most ways, but also means that people are converting videos into hugely bandwidth-wasting GIFs instead. I'd rather videos be "tap for sound" and autoplay at this point.

Setting a javascript script to simulate a click should be enough to autoplay the video on mobile (on body load, click once on video).

It would still take over full screen display, which is clearly not the intent.

The demo works on mobile but ya not entirely responsive in a lot of cases. Will be done soon.

It's a feature :D

Hmmm. You can't assume the desirability of background video always correlates to use of a mobile OS. It correlates more strongly to related factors such as connection speed, battery vs AC power and CPU speed. My laptop tethered and away from mains probably doesn't want background video. A docked high-end tablet probably does.

Possible use case for the Battery Status API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...

Does it require clicking for permission? I hope no, otherwise it would defeat the purpose...

If websites cannot act responsibly and make video and/or audio click-to-play[1], they are going to be added to the killfile. "Adblockers" are also useful for blocking annoyances[2], not just ads.

[1] or some other opt-in user option

[2] e.g. https://github.com/easylist/easylist/blob/master/fanboy-addo...

Grandparent comment may refer to basically never wanting such video (which is my preference). In other words, the "feature" of the implementation being broken on mobile should also be ported to desktops.

One thing I like on mobile instead is to load a few key frames at a fixed interval.

Almost not possible to control atm with current APIs

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