YouTube Buffer Video Prevents Auto-Playing

Firefox with Greasemonkey (All platforms): YouTube Buffer Video prevents clips on YouTube from auto-playing, letting you buffer entire videos and prevent annoying snags when bandwidth is tight.

There’s already a Greasemonkey script for this problem, YouTube Alternate Video Player, included in our Better YouTube Firefox extension, that replaces YouTube’s JavaScript player with FlowPlayer to prevent auto-playing. This script, however, does it natively and, perhaps, without any third-party drag on loading. I did encounter one or two clips out of a dozen tested that still managed to start playing when a link was clicked, and, at least in my browser, mousing over the video with Buffer Video enabled blacks it out. But if you’re looking for a lightweight way to get better control over your streaming, this script is just about right. YouTube Buffer Video is a free download, requires Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension/scripting engine to run.