Add option to make animated GIF images click-to-play

[Šime]

Today’s Mozilla Hacks article “A new year, a new MDN” includes several animated GIF images. These GIFs play automatically and loop infinitely (right?), and Firefox provides no way to pause them. This is a problem for some people. At the very least, it can be distracting.

There are multiple ways Mozilla can mitigate this issue, but the one feature that I’d like to see most is an option in Firefox that would stop all animated GIFs from auto-playing and instead make them click-to-play. For example, there could be a small play/pause button in the corner of the image.

Of course, websites should stop using GIFs and start using <video>, but many websites don’t. For example, Mozilla Hacks. GIFs are going to stick around for another decade.

[KERR]

Yes please! MS Teams does this well - GIFs play 3 times then stop, and you also get a play/pause button. In FF if I keep a tab open with GIFs mindlessly playing endlessly, it will impact battery life/CPU.

[batata]

It would improve performances on mobile as well. 👍

[foxfree99]

I want to block every single thing that moves, scrolls, blinks, flashes, plays, shouts or otherwise makes video or audio motion UNLESS I explicitly click on a thing to activate it.  No distractions.

nytimes.com and other news sites have video feeds embedded in their home page that do not have visible controls --not ads, but their own content, so adblockers don't help--and images on constant slideshow modes that change and change and change.

many websites have textscroll elements (click here now to subscribe! click here for special deals!)

Blogsites have 'holiday' themes that result in a 'snowflakes' moving down the screen.

Why is there not a universal movement blocker that prevents all this stuff unless I explicitly click on something to allow it?

And:  how can I kill 'textscroll' elements?  No amount of autoplay block seems to work on that, and 'textscroll' search in about:config brings up nothing to adjust.  I do not want to block all 'scroll' items because I want my usual scrolling options to be smooth and natural for when I am deliberately scrolling content, or want a box like the one where I am entering this text to naturally move up and show me the line I am entering without my having to scroll up for that.

[jscher2000]

The web standards people have created a standard way for sites to detect that a user wants the minimum amount of animation: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-reduced-motion 

However, if a site doesn't check or doesn't care, then the browser will render the page as instructed. It would be a good idea to have some kind of further restriction in the browser, although it surely will be complicated to implement and may involve many separate changes.

You may want to submit an "idea" in the Ideas section. I suspect these discussions will kind of scroll away.

[jscher2000]

On some sites, you may be able to use Reader View: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-web-pages 

[MintMain21]

You could probably use an extension like uBlock Origin to enforce strictly the "block everything" prerogative you want.

[KERR]

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/uu3bed/disable_animated_gifs_for_disabled_user_on_android/

^ Another use case

[KERR]

2 more suggestions:

• A way to disable the "fade" transitions (dunno if this helps accessibility, but it at least saves on CPU)
• A way to stop GIFs endlessly playing: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/add-option-to-make-animated-gif-images-click-to-play/idi-p/126

[Nich]

Add to the settings, the option to disable browser animations.

[Jon]

Hey all,

Here with an exciting update…

Your idea has been upgraded to the status of “Trending idea.” This means it’s now one step closer to reaching our internal teams for review—learn more about The Idea Journey.

Please keep the conversation going (the more details, the better) and stay tuned for updates 😃

-The Community Team

[BugMeNot]

Hello, good morning, afternoon or evening...

I'll go straight to the point...

Animated gifs animate if you move your mouse pointer over them

how does Discord do it, ¿eh?

The idea as described in the title is to limit gif animations thus reducing CPU usage, since when I'm on messenger (facebook) all the gifs are reproduced cloak and dagger and my old intel celeron 847 can't handle this, so... or the memory collapses or the browser hangs.

Its easy... adding it would be very useful and so... my pc will not explode XD

I would appreciate it much!!!

Add an option in the advanced preferences (about:config) "image.animation_mode" say something like "on hover" or similar.

In case if can't distinguish between images that are gifs and those that aren't (so as not to be mousing all over the web like an idiot), add an distinctive... like Discord does, too

Thanks you for read 😄

[daisywreath]

A click-to-play animations setting would be hugely helpful. I need to be able to limit animations because a lot of movement on the screen can trigger and/or worsen migraines for me. I currently have to manually alternate between having image.animation_mode set to once (when I'm having fewer issues) and none (when I'm finding animations to be really problematic) but it's inconvenient to switch back and forth. Keeping it set on none all the time isn't a good solution for me because there are times when I need to be able to play the animation because it contained relevant content rather than just being a filler image.

[KERR]

I'm thinking this could be a setting with 3 options:

• Play GIFs X times only (with a "play" button to restart them) - default. Same as MS Teams
• Play GIFs endlessly (warning, this may impact CPU/battery). Same as current Firefox implementation
• Play GIFs on demand only. Extreme, but useful to some people I'm sure

[davemc_5485]

Sometimes I don't even want to see the gif at all.  Right click image gives open in new tab, save as,  copy, copy link, email, inspect etc, but not block or hide.

I may wish to read a page that has one disruptive image.

Adding a hide image or mask image might be a related task to stop image autoplay.

[Yukulélé]

As an alternative, I suggest adding a "show controls" toggle option on gif right-click.

This will show gif controls (play, pause, seek, loop, speed) as it does for video.