Can you disable autoplay on Pluto TV?
Can you disable autoplay on Pluto TV?
In my personal opinion, the Pluto TV autoplay is among the most annoying in streaming. Do you have any option to turn it off?
All in all, the prospect presented by Pluto TV is a pretty good one. The streamer does ask you to put up with ads, but in exchange, it offers hundreds of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and thousands of TV shows and movies on demand. Best of all, it’s free, and if you sign up for an account with no credit card, Pluto TV will even save your place when you’re enjoying your newest free binge.
But there is one thing I don’t care for at all with Pluto TV’s interface, and that’s its autoplay feature. Is there any way to toggle autoplay on or off with Pluto TV? I searched frantically for the answer — see what I came up with here.
Everything you need to know about autoplay on Pluto TV
Can you disable autoplay with Pluto TV?
Pluto TV has a pretty obnoxious autoplay, in my opinion. On the streamer’s smart TV app, this isn’t as bad as it is elsewhere, but it’s still highly noticeable. When you boot it up, Pluto begins playing a FAST channel automatically in the background, but still devotes most of the screen to the channel guide, which you can browse through for new content to stream.
Pluto relegates autoplay video to the background on its smart TV app. Click to expand.
The autoplay on the streamer’s website is much more pervasive. The box devoted to autoplay takes up one corner of the screen, and even if you click out of the guide to browse on-demand movies, you’re still forced to watch whichever live channel Pluto automatically dials up when you hit the home page. There’s also no way to close this window — you can expand it, but that’s all.
The box at the bottom-right corner of the screen is reserved totally for autoplay on the Pluto TV website. Click to expand.
Most insidious of all, however, is that there is no way whatever to turn autoplay off on any Pluto TV platform. Doesn’t matter if you seek out a solution on smart TV, mobile, or the web; there’s no method of disabling autoplay on Pluto TV. Searching for the term “autoplay” on the Pluto support website yields zero results.
No doubt, the streamer feels that using autoplay this aggressively is a good way to get you watching faster when you’re there. But to me, it’s distracting, totally unnecessary, and instantly makes me want to use the streamer less than other free streamers that are a little more flexible.
Will Pluto TV ever allow you to control autoplay?
There is at least some hope in this regard. Pluto TV is now under the control of a new ownership team, as are all other assets controlled by Paramount and its new merger partner, Skydance Media. Incoming officials have frequently promised to make Paramount streamers more tech-forward, and an upgrade to the user experience of Pluto TV could well be in the cards.
However, it’s important to consider that Pluto TV is a free streamer. Such services frequently include fewer overall features than paid platforms, and it may be that Paramount decides to keep its more meaningful changes for Paramount+.
