What we’re doing to help you update your courses for browser auto-play settings (updated 12/06/2018)

May 15, 2018

Recently some common browsers, including Chrome and Safari, have started blocking auto-play of audio and video content on the sites you visit. That includes audio and video in e-learning courses that are hosted online.

That means that audio or video on the first slide of a course will not automatically play. It also means that videos and audio won’t work when learners suspend a course and restart on a slide that contains audio or video. Your content won’t be affected by this issue unless videos and audio are set to play automatically.

Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do to override the browser’s settings. That’s why we released updates for Storyline 360, Studio 360, Storyline 3, and Storyline 2 to automatically detect when this occurs and present the learner with a play button overlay. That user interaction is what the browser needs in order to play the audio or video. If your courses have a required user interaction on the first slide and no media, you may not need to republish to have the media autoplay.

We’re working on a content updater for Storyline 360, Studio 360, Storyline 3, Storyline 2 and Studio '13 that’ll let you mass update all your courses. In the meantime, you’ll need to republish your courses one at a time to fix this issue.

We know this is super frustrating, and we’re so sorry for the trouble. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

UPDATE (12/06/2018): We've now created a tool that lets you mass update existing courses without republishing them. Currently, the updater works on Storyline 360, Storyline 3, Studio 360, Storyline 2, and Studio '13 courses. See this article for details!

159 Replies

Tracy Carroll

almost 6 years ago05/15/18 at 5:03 pm (UTC)

Thank you for getting to work on this so quickly!

Ashley Schwartau

almost 6 years ago05/15/18 at 5:52 pm (UTC)

THANK YOU!!!!!! A content updater would be amaaaaaaaazing and make our team cry less :)

Ashley Schwartau

almost 6 years ago05/15/18 at 5:54 pm (UTC)

Also not to be a total nag, but are you thinking like days until the content updater gets released, or weeks? Since we have people breathing down our necks, we're trying to decide on the best way to move forward and what our timelines will look like.

joe Najera

almost 6 years ago05/15/18 at 8:35 pm (UTC)

Thanks for working on this. Any chance for an ETA? Trying to avoid republishing a bunch of presentations but don’t want to put it off if we’ll be waiting a while.

Kristen Erwin

almost 6 years ago05/15/18 at 8:41 pm (UTC)

A content updater would be very helpful thanks!

Justin Grenier
Author

almost 6 years ago05/16/18 at 9:30 pm (UTC)

A quick update: Since the original release of Chrome 66 effectively broke a lot of web content, (such as e-learning courses with audio introductions), Google responded to the cries for help and rolled back their audio policy in an update to Chrome 66 on May 15, 2018. We recommend updating Chrome to the latest version, which allows audio to autoplay as expected.

But this reprieve is temporary. Google will stop autoplaying audio again in October 2018 when Chrome 70 is released. And with the software updates and content updaters mentioned above, you’ll be ready.

Dayn Wilkins

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 7:44 am (UTC)

Does this just affect HTML5 published courses, or Flash as well?

romain berdoulay

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 9:36 am (UTC)

Hello Justin, thank's to work on this problem.

I have the latest version of Chrome and the audio autoplay does not work.

Have you a solution for that problem?

Thank you very much

Will Findlay

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 1:23 pm (UTC)

Unfortunately as most of our content is in an LMS where we have no FTP access (it allows course content modifications, but only through a web interface), updating is going to be a major issue for us. Any chance Google would be open to some enhancements like 1) telling the user sound has been blocked and 2) providing the user a way to turn sound on?

Will Findlay

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 1:40 pm (UTC)

Justin Grenier

It also means that videos and audio won’t work when learners suspend a course and restart on a slide that contains audio or video.

If you used the "Prompt to Resume" option on your courses, would this dialog box that pops up count as an interaction that would then allow audio?

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 1:54 pm (UTC)

I think that's a question for Google and I think we all know the answer ...

Would adding a slide trigger to play the audio after a certain amount of time (e.g. 1 sec) get around the autoplay issue? Technically the audio wouldn't be autoplaying if it was triggered.

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 2:05 pm (UTC)

David Tait

I think that's a question for Google and I think we all know the answer ...

Well, it does appear they are listening to comments here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=840866#c103

Renea Paradis

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 2:13 pm (UTC)

Wow this shows just how NOT in control of our content we really are.

almost 6 years ago05/17/18 at 4:32 pm (UTC)

Thanks for this, Justin!

almost 6 years ago05/22/18 at 2:59 pm (UTC)

Hi - I am showing that I have the most updated version of Chrome, but yet my Storyline modules aren't working properly. I also tried to republish one module and it still isn't working? Any other ideas?

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
Staff

almost 6 years ago05/22/18 at 7:38 pm (UTC)

Hi Cassie,

Did you confirm you're also using the latest update of Storyline 360? The 3.15.15581.0 update included the fix for Chrome autoplay, and we also have a new update available today of 3.16.15842.0 which fixes the issues here.

The changes Chrome made will only impact Audio, the Video items will still not autoplay and you'll see that play button to start.

Knowledge Central .

almost 6 years ago05/23/18 at 7:27 am (UTC)

Just to check... I've updated the software but issue now is that when I place the published file into LMS, it doesn't show up. No contents or whatsoever. It just shows the loading page for 30 mins or more and still, nothing showed up. I suspect that there's bug within the latest update!

almost 6 years ago05/24/18 at 1:42 pm (UTC)

Hey Calvin,

Looks like I just responded to a similar post here if you'd like to keep the conversation going in one location.

David Phenicie

almost 6 years ago05/24/18 at 2:41 pm (UTC)

1. What is ETA on course Updater. 2. Will their be a content updater to mass update from Sl2 to SL360 and correct the autoplay issue?

Leslie McKerchie
Staff

almost 6 years ago05/24/18 at 9:06 pm (UTC)

Hi David,

Great questions.

1. We do not have an ETA on the updater, but we will be sure to update you here when we can.

2. The updater will be individual to the products/version the content was created on.

I wanted to be sure that you saw Justin's update here regarding the Chrome auto-play that was originally posted as well.

almost 6 years ago05/28/18 at 1:31 pm (UTC)

Hi Justin. I apologize in advance if I'm being slow, but does issue affect all slides where video is set to auto play or just when it's on the 1st/opening slide (or resume slide with video)? In other words, do I need to add launch buttons to each slide with video for it to work properly?

Thanks in advance,

Paula

Ludvig Palm

almost 6 years ago05/28/18 at 2:11 pm (UTC)

This post was removed by the author

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
Staff

almost 6 years ago05/29/18 at 5:47 pm (UTC)

Hi Paula,

No apologies needed! It's been a bit confusing for everyone. ;-)

It's based on the first slide having an autoplay - and beyond that likely the user is interacting with the course and browsers such as Chrome will take that as an indication that the course can keep playing.