youtube video doesnt autoplay while clicked in chrome

Starting in Version 62, this is a feature in Chrome - to avoid annoying ads to blare their sound at you when you open a page (https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes).

It will not autoplay unless the user activates it for the site; Chrome has that built in now.
You can change that for your own installation in the settings.


According to the comment from @Narendra, Chrome is preventing autoplay, thus you from relying on autoplay to pretend you are reacting to the user's click.

There are 2 solutions I can think of:

Solution 1:change the UX of your app so that when clicking on the thumbnail, it becomes clear that the video will need another click to run, for example by opening it inside a modal.

Solution 2: (not tested) give back the play control to the video:

  1. you display the fast-loading thumbnail

  2. you load the videos without waiting for the user to click on it. To keep a fast load, you can wait for idle to create the underlying iframes https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/requestIdleCallback

  3. on hover on the thumbnail, you hide the thumbnail, revealing the video below. On click, it should play.