HBO Max, a premium streaming site, offers a wide selection of the latest and greatest movies and TV shows for your enjoyment. Like many other streaming sites, HBO Max also offers a selection of features designed to make watching life easier. One of these features is the autoplay feature.
While some love this feature, not everyone loves it. If you want to disable this feature, you've come to the right place. In this article, we discuss HBO Max and the ability to disable autoplay on the platform.
Can you turn off autoplay on HBO Max?
HBO Max offers the latest trending movies and TV shows, making it easy to catch up on your favorite shows. Even better, you can stream the app on various devices including iOS devices, Android devices, Apple TV, PCs, Amazon Fire, and Samsung smart TVs.
The platform's offerings don't stop there.
HBO Max offers users an array of additional features that allow you to streamline your viewing experience. For example, you can download shows to watch offline or delete items from your "Continue Watching" reel.
Autoplay HBO Max
Autoplay is another of HBO Max's features to streamline the user experience.
Watching television has evolved and no longer requires waiting an entire week to see the next episode of a show. Instead, streaming platforms offer an entire season or two of the latest TV series, encouraging binge-watching. A feature like autoplay adds to the experience by removing the need to do anything other than watch. The autoplay feature allows a new episode of your show to start automatically, usually a few seconds after the previous episode's credits.
While autoplay can be helpful for some, it can be frustrating for others.
For example, if you fall asleep while the show is airing, you'll have to rewind or rewind to find the episode that was playing when you fell asleep. Not only is it frustrating, but it's also time-consuming. If you're watching on a device that's using paid data, that could also end up increasing your charges.
Disable autoplay
Other streaming platforms such as Netflix and YouTube also have an autoplay feature. These platforms also provide the ability to toggle the feature on and off. So if you'd rather skip to the next episode manually, you can. While most streaming platforms have autoplay set by default, the ability to turn the feature off leaves viewers with a sense of control.
Unfortunately, HBO Max doesn't offer the same features.
If you search the streaming site's help page on disabling autoplay, you'll see the following message: “No, autoplay cannot be disabled. Instead, you'll have to pause or stop video playback before the next episode starts.
Essentially, as an HBO Max user, you'll have to manually stop your show's next episode from autoplaying by pressing "Pause" or "Stop" on your remote.
If you don't stop your show at the end of your episode, you may encounter further frustrations.
For example, HBO Max doesn't come with a "Forward" button. If you fell asleep in the middle of an episode, you'll need to skim through it to get back to where you left off. Cleanup takes time because most people don't write down the timestamp of the episode right before falling asleep. And, if you go past the point you last saw in the program, you may see a spoiler.
Another feature that HBO Max omits is a "Next Episode" button. That leaves you with two choices. You can watch until the end of the episode and wait for the next one to start. Or, you can skim through the credits and then wait for autoplay to take over. Unfortunately, there is no quick way to skip between episodes.
Autoplay issues
There have been some issues with HBO Max's autoplay feature, and some users have found the autoplay feature to not work at all. Instead of autoplaying, the episode currently being watched would end and then jump back to the start of that same episode. Then, when viewers tried to play the episode that followed, the HBO Max site would crash.
HBO Max informed viewers that it was aware of the issue and decided to fix the problem, returning the autoplay feature to how it was initially. However, viewers still don't have the option to disable the feature.
If you find that your HBO Max Autoplay feature isn't working properly, there are several ways to fix it. The first is to restart the device you are using to stream the platform. Another option is to reinstall your HBO Max app. Here's how to do the latter on an Android device:
- Locate the HBO Max app on your device.
- Press and hold the app icon to call up the "Options" menu.
- Tap "Uninstall" to remove HBO Max from your device.
- Go to the Google Play Store and download the HBO Max app.
- Once installed, log in to your account.
If you're running HBO Max on an iOS device, here are the steps to reinstall the app:
- On your "Home" screen, find the HBO Max app.
- Press and hold the app icon until the "Selection" screen appears.
- Choose the “Remove Application” option.
- Follow the on-screen prompts that follow to remove the app from your device.
- Once the app is deleted, launch the App Store and search for the HBO Max app.
- Download and install the app on your device
- Sign into your account.
If your problem with autoplay still persists, contacting the HBO Max Help Center is your best bet. Talking to the customer support team and providing them with your account information will allow them to assist you directly and resolve the issue faster.
Autoplay is here to stay, for now
Autoplay is a feature that in most cases is useful for most viewers. However, it can sometimes cause frustration, especially if you often fall asleep while watching. HBO Max has yet to release an update that allows you to disable this feature, so for now you'll need to make the most of the feature.
Have you ever tried disabling your HBO Max Autoplay feature? Did you find a method that worked? Let us know in the comments section below.
