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How to turn off "auto-play" on Samsung Galaxy J3

startac4

Well-Known Member
Apr 13, 2020
192
79
My family member got the Samsung Galaxy J3 Orbit. We tested shooting a short movie clip. After seeing it the first time it came up with two options: auto play on (continuously shows all movies) and cancel auto play. But the screen changed before I could press "cancel" and now it keeps playing the one movie that is there continuously (when in gallery). I have looked in Setting and there is nothing there for "auto-play". How do I turn this awful "auto-play" off?
Android release 8.0
 
My family member got the Samsung Galaxy J3 Orbit. We tested shooting a short movie clip. After seeing it the first time it came up with two options: auto play on (continuously shows all movies) and cancel auto play. But the screen changed before I could press "cancel" and now it keeps playing the one movie that is there continuously (when in gallery). I have looked in Setting and there is nothing there for "auto-play". How do I turn this awful "auto-play" off?
Android release 8.0

Did you look at the gallery's settings or the phone's general settings? That setting would probably be in gallery. If you can't find something there, go to the settings > apps menu and goto gallery, delete the cache and the storage. (this won't delete photos or videos, those are just separate files) Additionally, "gallery" is just an app, and there are lots of good gallery apps in the store, the ones that come with the phone tend to not be the best, in my humble opinion. If your gallery lacks, just disable it and use another.
 
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I found this on https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s9-s9/how-to-turn-off-auto-playvideo/td-p/456269/page/2

"While the videos are auto playing press anywhere on the screen and then the three dots will appear in the top right corner. Press the ... before the next video plays or else it will disappear. Once you get the ... click on settings and then turn off auto play should be the first setting."

This is correct in explaining the idiotic thing one must do to find the correct "three dots". When the video starts playing there are three dots in the upper right corner. But these are the wrong three dots. One must press the screen, preferably the "start arrow symbol" while it's already playing, and then there will be different three dots in the top right corner. Pressing those dots does indeed show a different "Settings". Selecting that "Settings" opens a list which includes "Auto play next" and "Auto repeat". However, both are already set to "off". Tried turning them on/off but that didn't help. Clearly this is another annoying Android bug.
 
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Clearly this is another annoying Android bug.
I just found this on that same other website:
"Hey there,
Yes I did get to the bottom of it. I spoke with Samsung Stars and long story short, it's an automatic feature that previews your videos when you play from gallery."

That makes it worse than just another Android bug. This Android software is what's known in the computer community as BAD code = Broken As Designed.
 
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Gallery Settings only deal with syncing to cloud and making stories. "settings > apps menu and goto gallery" - only things there are "Notifications", "permissions" and "set as default". Nothing there about finding the cache to delete it.

This is from your phone's user manual, storage is where you'll find cache / storage stuff. Screenshot_20200812-133920_1.jpg
 
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Thank you Trom for digging that out. It's just more of heavy-handed "documentation" (of google or whomever is controlling the Android software) that this information is buried the way it is. Having competent tech writers is obviously not a priority for them, either.

And clearing the cache had no affect on the problem. As I explained earlier it's BAD code (Broken As Designed) that no one cares about fixing because this is how their developers designed it. And it's such an obvious design failure that I have to question how much (if any) beta and ESP testing was done on this Android release and how much feedback did anyone look at.

By the way, the page of the manual that you appended to your post, while of course helpful and appreciated, does not match the page(s) nor selections as thay appear in the manual that I had downloaded for this specific J3 Orbit phone.
 
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Thank you Trom for digging that out. It's just more of heavy-handed "documentation" (of google or whomever is controlling the Android software) that this information is buried the way it is. Having competent tech writers is obviously not a priority for them, either.

And clearing the cache had no affect on the problem. As I explained earlier it's BAD code (Broken As Designed) that no one cares about fixing because this is how their developers designed it. And it's such an obvious design failure that I have to question how much (if any) beta and ESP testing was done on this Android release and how much feedback did anyone look at.

By the way, the page of the manual that you appended to your post, while of course helpful and appreciated, does not match the page(s) nor selections as thay appear in the manual that I had downloaded for this specific J3 Orbit phone.

Odd, that documentation was labeled J3 Orbit on the front page. Aside from the cache, did you also clear storage? That would delete the apps config files. Aside from that, my advice would be to disable the app and download a better gallery.
 
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