How do I stop Safari from automatically playing videos iOS?

Is there a way to disable the autoplaying videos like on most news sites where they play a thumbnail at the bottom of your screen? I love that Safari on my Mac can do it. Safari on iOS blocks the sound but I still find the moving images annoying and distracting when I'm just trying to read an article. Arstechnica and Associated Press are two good examples.

The option in Accessibility under "Motion" to disable autoplay previews does not work.

adp-20 said:

I have this exact same problem, for a while now. Indeed the "Motion" option doesn't work at all. I also have a similar problem on Mac (Safari 14). With Mac, none of the usual options "Never auto-play" and not even "Disallow inline video" in debug menu work. First I thought it had something to do with a content blocker but that's not the case.

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I use Adguard and the "stopthemadness" extensions on my mac and that solves the issue there but using Safari on the iPad is really annoying. Maybe I'm somewhat autistic or something but the moving images really distracts me from trying to read an article.

Same problem here (7+,14.2). Really annoying as uses data on 4g and ads on safari still play as scroll through Google search. All advice on any forum says the same (motion etc.) but still not turned off despite rebooting. Maybe a recent bug in 14 as I managed to turn off before with same phone. Grrrrrr, Apple.....

MikeLondonSE said:

Same problem here (7+,14.2). Really annoying as uses data on 4g and ads on safari still play as scroll through Google search. All advice on any forum says the same (motion etc.) but still not turned off despite rebooting. Maybe a recent bug in 14 as I managed to turn off before with same phone. Grrrrrr, Apple.....

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Ad blockers can help with ads at least.