How can I stop Safari from playing videos on a site automatically?
Safari has started to play advertisement videos it finds somewhere on a site (I often cannot find them myself) very loudly. That is annoying. How can I tell Safari not to play anything with video or audio without me first clicking on it?
Update: I downloaded and installed both recommended extensions. The Web browser is still playing advertisements (at least their audio).
The easiest (and free) way would be to upgrade your system to OSX 10.9 (Mavericks); they actually built this into the newest version of Safari which is included.
If you don't want to venture down that route, there are a few Safari extensions you can use to accomplish your goal.
ClickToPlugin and/or ClickToFlash http://hoyois.github.io/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/
YouTube5 extension - blocks them by not supporting them http://www.verticalforest.com/youtube5-extension/
3: AdBlock Plus - follow the development builds page (the 2nd link) to see when they release their version for Safari - I know it's delayed right now but still in development, You'll need to google this as I don't have enough rep to post more than 2 links, sorry.
Personally I run Mavericks, but also use ClickToPlugin; it works for any ads that the newest version of Safari doesn't catch.
The Safari extension ClickToPlugin is similar to other plugin-blocking extensions, but it has many features and customizable settings which most blockers don't, including the ability to block plugins other than Flash. Scroll down the linked page to see some of the other features.
Here is a screenshot of an example YouTube video, showing the video preview along with the type of plugin blocked:
Here is a sample of some of the settings in ClickToPlugin:
