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How to disable auto-play and background videos on Disney+

Disney+ is full of great content, but it also comes with many of the most annoying features common to big streaming services.

Like Netflix, Disney+ comes with auto-play turned on by default, meaning the next episode of a show will start playing automatically before the previous one’s credits have finished. On some platforms, Disney+ also plays video while you’re still on a program’s information screen and shows trailers on landing pages. That can be loud, annoying, and a gateway to spoilers.

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Thankfully, you can turn both of those features off. To disable auto-play on Disney+, take the following steps:

  1. Open the Disney+ app and log in.
  2. Click on your User Profile icon. On some devices, the icon is in the upper right corner of the screen. On others, you’ll find it on the menu to your left.
  3. Select Edit Profiles from the drop-down menu.
  4. Find your User Profile and click the pencil icon next to your avatar.
  5. Click on the Autoplay toggle to turn it from on to off.

Now, you should be able to enjoy the credits on your Disney+ movies and TV shows without making a mad dash for the remote.

The process for disabling background videos on Disney+ is almost exactly the same. Here’s how it works:

  1. Open the Disney+ app and log in.
  2. Click on the User Profile icon.
  3. Select Edit Profiles from the drop-down menu.
  4. Find your User Profile and click the pencil icon next to your avatar.
  5. Click on the Background Video toggle to turn it from on to off.

Keep in mind that the background video toggle, much like the background video feature itself, isn’t currently available on all platforms. While some sources claim that the background video setting only appears on Samsung Smart TVs, Android televisions, and Apple TV devices, we’ve confirmed that it pops up on hardware such as the Amazon Fire TV as well.

Of course, in order to use these features, you need to have a Disney+ subscription first. You can sign up for a seven-day free trial of Disney+ (which costs $7 a month after the trial expires), or get a $13 bundle that includes Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu. You can remove ads from the bundled Hulu subscription for a few extra bucks, but it takes some extra steps for ad-free.

Chris Gates
Former Digital Trends Contributor
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