Facebook say they got positive feedback during the testing phase.
If you’re fond of secretly scrolling through your Facebook feed at work or in other places you shouldn’t be, you should beware of a change to users’ news feed announced by the social networking behemoth today.
Facebook revealed details of a number of new ways to watch Facebook video on Tuesday, including the revelation that users will no longer have to tap on a video in their feed to hear sound; instead, sound will fade in and out as you scroll through videos in your news feed.
“Videos in News Feed have previously played silently — you tap on a video to hear sound,” read the Facebook announcement.
“As people watch more video on phones, they’ve come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on. After testing sound on in News Feed and hearing positive feedback, we’re slowly bringing it to more people. With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in News Feed, bringing those videos to life.”
Although Facebook announced the news publicly on Valentine’s Day, having sound on videos when they’re previously used to having them play silently is bound to catch a few people off guard.
Sound won’t play on videos if your device is on silent, however and if you want to continue on as before, you can disable the feature in “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” in Settings.
Apart from the sound issue, Facebook announced further updates to the way in which users will be able to watch videos on the site, including the introduction of a Facebook app for TV, which will roll out soon to app stores for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV, with more platforms to come.
More information on the changes is available to read here.
