New iOS 10 Video Policy Will Save You Data, Energy, and a Ton of Frustration

Apple is planning on making some changes to the way Safari handles video and GIF playback in iOS 10.

The changes will include updated policies for how Safari handles “video” elements, according to a blog post by Apple software engineer Jer Noble.

“Starting in iOS 10, WebKit relaxes its inline and autoplay policies to make these presentations possible, but still keeps in mind sites’ bandwidth and users’ batteries,” Noble wrote.

Noble noted in the blog post that GIFs, although a popular form of web content, is a bandwidth- and energy-expensive format. Because of that, a good number of GIFs on the web are actually in a video format behind the scenes.

“But while this move does spare websites’ bandwidth costs as well as saving users’ batteries, it comes at a usability cost,” Noble said.

This is because, by default, Apple has a slew of restrictions on how video content is played in the iOS version of Safari.

Apple’s iOS 9, and previous versions, treated these video-encoded GIFs as normal videos on a web page. So, to play them, you had to trigger them with a tap, wait for the video to respond, and then view the GIF in full-screen mode, according to 9to5Mac.

Which is, pretty obviously, not the way a GIF is meant to be viewed.

Apple’s changes in iOS 10 will refine and simplify the user experience by allowing silent videos to autoplay on web pages — hopefully taking out some of the clunky user experience in GIF playback.

Videos, including GIFs, encoded with a “play in line” element will also be viewable without needing to go into full-screen mode, according to MacRumors.

“Web developers are doing some serious amazing stuff by integrating elements into … their pages,” Noble said in a blog post, adding that these pages often won’t work on the current iOS version of Safari.

On the other end of the spectrum, videos that have audio elements will be paused by default and require a tap to play.

Apple’s engineers hope that this new policy will cut down on insistent ads, spam videos, and other types of invasive auto-playing video content on web pages.

Additionally, videos will only play when they are onscreen and visible to the user, and will automatically stop playing if the user scrolls away from it — hopefully saving some battery life in the process.

“We believe these new policies really make video a much more useful tool for designing modern, compelling websites without taxing users bandwidth or batteries,” Noble added.

These changes will be featured in the newest version of Safari, which will be included with iOS 10. The new Apple operating system is currently available to beta testers and developers.

iOS 10 will be released this fall alongside multiple new Apple devices.

Do you like Apple’s ideology of how videos should be handled on iOS? Let us know in the comments below!