I’m pretty sure this option exists in the youtube settings, I found it and disabled autoplay at one point. Poke around, you’ll find it.

but you have to be logged in for that setting to be effective and most of the time I'm not logged in when browsing YouTube...

Sometimes I just let it play in the background to eat up their bandwidth for no reason because i don't like stupid default settings. I get it that google is trying to turn the Internet into a TV, but soon you won't even have to type anything in Google Search... the results will come to you.

You want autoplay off when you're trying to eat up their bandwidth?

no, I let it do its thing when I'm not logged in... muted, of course.

It also consumes power for no reason.

yeah I know, it's not really a good solution unless most people do it. The better alternative is to not use the Youtube app or website... you can use NewPipe as an app for accessing Youtube, for example...

Spite is a reason.

My personal solution is to play everything with mpv instead: From YouTube's SERP, I copy the link to the video and run `mpv "$(xsel -b)"`, which downloads the video with youtube-dl and plays it in mpv, i.e. in a desktop app. No bullshit, no autoplay, just plain video and audio. As a bonus, this works with almost any website containing video, so the player works the same regardless of website.

Yes! Added advantages that it skips ads, and has keyboard control for all sorts of things that are sometimes useful depending on what you're watching or listening to: playback speed, A-B loop repeat, adjust brightness / hue, pause, frame advance, take screenshot etc.

So does this method strip out ads?

In the top right of any video page, above the "Up next" slot, is an "Autoplay" switch. Turn it off.

Disappointingly, the setting is per-device, and not saved into your account. But it's there.

I have Auto Play disabled on my YouTube account for regular channels. The control is above the Up Next list and I've had it off for well over a year now.

https://i.imgur.com/qaK6W8W.jpg

Playlists though keep going which is annoying.

Right, but you have to set that on each individual browser. It doesn't apply to your account.

Are you talking playlists or period? On directly going to a video mine is disabled on the desktop site unless I load in incog window where I lose my settings. Playlists, however, I know of no way to fix it.

Try Magic Actions [1] if you're a Chrome user - it allows setting of several useful options (night mode, yay) and more importantly disabling autoplay.

(long time lurker, previously registered, but forgotten password and email account no longer in my control)

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magic-actions-for-...

I actually use the autoplay a lot to fake curated playlists when listening to music. Works pretty well. You start with a good song and it keeps getting good related songs.

Until it trips up and you go from Foo Fighters to Taylor Swift but tht only happens rarely.