“YouTube Kids” is cleaner than regular YouTube. Sadly, I haven’t found any method of disabling autoplay. If it’s possible, how can I disable autoplay

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My question

How can I disable the YouTube Kids autoplay feature — on iOS, on MacOS, or on any other platform?

Please assume:

  • I own a non-jailbroken iPhone.
  • I have administrator rights on my computer.
  • I can freely install any desktop browsers, mobile browsers, extensions, and/or userscripts that you want me to install.
  • I can also install uBlock Origin on my computer, and can create any custom element-hiding or script-blocking rules that you suggest.

Background to my question

"YouTube Kids" is YouTube's official interface for kids 12 and under. It isn't 100% safe for kids, but it's still cleaner than regular YouTube.

Children can watch YouTube Kids through the iOS app, through the Android app, or directly on the website.

It looks like autoplay is always on, and there's no way to shut it off. This means that, after one video finishes, the next one starts automatically. I think this is a suboptimal design, especially for kids. Various sources suggest that autoplay makes the service more addictive and mind-numbing.

I've looked in the parental settings and the kids' settings, and have found no way to disable autoplay.

There's a "timer" feature which lets you schedule the app to stop working in a configurable number of minutes from now (e.g. 30 minutes), but setting a timer is not the same as simply disabling autoplay.

This article indirectly implies that, on iOS, it may be possible to disable autoplay. But maybe that article is outdated and it's impossible nowadays.

Edit

I've made a Reddit post. The post asks about the idea of somehow using uBlock Origin to disable autoplay in the YouTube Kids web app. If that doesn't work, maybe I'll ask some userscripting community.

Best Answer

I checked on iOS 12.4, YouTube kids app, there's no feature for autoplay settings. It is "on", on web and on app. Alternatively, I am not very experienced in user scripts, but can suggest a potential, easy algorithm.

When the current video time = (total video time - 1) seconds, pause video.

I have no idea how to write it, but you can get help from sites like

Do note that some Safari versions might resist installing user scripts, but if you have uBlock origin installed, your version should be good to go.

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