How to Stop YouTube Autoplay on Any Device

The short version: there's an autoplay toggle on YouTube itself, usually a small switch near the video player or in your account settings, and turning it off stops the "next video" countdown dead. But the browser you use, the device you're watching on and even YouTube's own app settings can all override each other, so you often need to switch it off in more than one place to make it stick.

I've spent more time than I'd like to admit at my desk at 11pm watching a YouTube video about marketing trends turn into a video about someone restoring a rusty tractor. Autoplay is designed to do exactly that. It's not an accident or a glitch, it's a feature built to keep you watching, and it works on all of us, not just teenagers. So let's fix it, device by device.

Why autoplay exists (and why it's not really "for you")

YouTube makes money from watch time. More watch time means more ad impressions, which means more revenue. Autoplay is one of the single biggest levers for keeping people on the platform, which is precisely why it's switched on by default everywhere, and why the toggle to turn it off is never quite as visible as the toggle to turn it back on.

That's the uncomfortable bit nobody really says out loud: the "off" switch for autoplay is intentionally a little fiddly to find, and on some devices it quietly resets itself. This isn't your imagination. It's a design choice, and it's worth knowing that going in so you don't blame yourself when it creeps back on after an app update.

How to stop autoplay on the YouTube website (desktop)

1. Go to youtube.com and start playing any video
2. Look at the player controls along the bottom right, or in the top right corner of the video depending on your browser window size
3. Find the switch labelled "Autoplay" (it looks like a small toggle, sometimes with a play/pause style icon next to it)
4. Click it so it turns grey or shows as off

This setting is usually stored per browser and per Google account, so if you use Chrome at work and Edge at home, you'll need to switch it off in both. If you're logged out, or using a private/incognito window, it may reset to on every single time.

How to stop autoplay on the YouTube mobile app (iPhone and Android)

On the app, the toggle sits in a slightly different place:

• Open the YouTube app and tap any video to play it full screen
• Tap the screen once to bring up the controls
• Look for the "Autoplay" switch, usually top right of the player
• Tap it to turn it off

Worked example: say you watch YouTube mostly on your phone during your commute, maybe fifteen minutes on the train each morning. You switch autoplay off on the app on Monday. By Thursday it's switched itself back on, because you updated the app over the weekend and the update reset some playback settings. This happens often enough that it's worth checking the toggle every few weeks rather than assuming "off" is permanent.

How to stop autoplay on a smart TV or YouTube TV app

Smart TVs (Samsung, LG, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast with Google TV, Roku) all run their own version of the YouTube app, and the autoplay control is usually found differently:

• Open the YouTube app and start a video
• Use your remote to select the video and bring up the settings menu, usually a gear or cog icon
• Scroll to "Autoplay" and select "off"

On some older TV models there's no visible toggle at all inside the player, and you'll need to go through the main Settings menu within the app instead of the player controls. If your TV app keeps freezing before you even get that far, that's a separate problem worth sorting first, and this piece on what to do when YouTube keeps freezing walks through the fixes by device.

Turning off "Up Next" autoplay on the homepage and sidebar

Even with the in-player toggle off, YouTube's homepage and the "up next" sidebar still try to pull you into related videos through autoplay previews and thumbnails. There isn't a single switch for this, but you can reduce how aggressive it feels by managing your YouTube recommendations, since autoplay almost always serves up whatever's currently being pushed to your homepage. Clearing your watch history and telling YouTube "not interested" on videos you don't want more of has a real knock-on effect on what autoplay queues up next.

Stopping autoplay for kids and teens on shared devices

If it's a family iPad or a shared TV, turning off autoplay in your own account won't help if your child is logged into a different profile, or watching logged out entirely. For that you need to go through real parental controls on YouTube, which let you lock autoplay off at the account level rather than relying on a toggle that any curious nine-year-old can switch back on in two taps.

Why "just closing the app" doesn't work

A lot of advice online says to simply close the YouTube app between videos. In practice, most people don't, because the whole point of autoplay is that it removes the moment where you'd normally make that decision. The gap between "one video finishes" and "another one starts" used to be about 5 seconds of you actively clicking something. Autoplay closes that gap to zero. Turning the toggle off restores that pause, which is the actual fix, not willpower.

If you're using YouTube for work, not just watching

If you're embedding YouTube videos on your own website or in client work, autoplay settings matter for a different reason entirely, since an embedded video that autoplays the "next" clip from someone else's channel can send your visitors straight off your site. Worth checking the embed code settings covered in this guide on how to embed a YouTube video step by step, which lets you disable related video suggestions at the end of the clip entirely.

A quicker alternative: slow it down instead of switching it off

If autoplay keeps resetting itself and you're fed up fighting the toggle, there's a less obvious fix: change the playback speed instead. Watching at 1.25x or 1.5x means you finish videos faster and consciously choose the next one rather than drifting into whatever's queued. Here's how to change playback speed on YouTube across phone, TV and PC, it takes about ten seconds per device and changes how passive your viewing feels.

For the rest of the series, see the YouTube Help: 30 Guides to Channels, Subscribers, Monetisation, Thumbnails and Fixes.

Frequently asked questions

Does turning off autoplay save data or battery?

A little, yes. Every autoplayed video is a video you didn't choose to watch, so cutting those out reduces unnecessary streaming, which matters more on mobile data than on wifi. It won't transform your battery life, but over a month of commutes it adds up.

Why does YouTube autoplay keep turning itself back on?

App updates, logging out and back in, switching browsers, and using incognito mode can all reset the autoplay toggle to its default "on" state. It's not a bug, it's how the setting is built to behave, so check it again after any update.

Can I stop autoplay without creating a Google account?

Yes, the in-player toggle works whether you're signed in or not, but it typically won't be remembered between sessions if you're logged out, which means you'd need to switch it off every time you open a new browser tab or window.

Is there a way to stop autoplay on all my devices at once?

No single switch covers every device, because the setting is stored separately on each app and browser. You need to turn it off individually on your phone, your desktop browser and your TV app, and recheck it occasionally, since there's no account-wide master toggle that controls all of them together.