Videos make Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram fun but the auto-play feature consume lots of data, the good news is that you can stop it on some of these platforms.

Facebook and Twitter Android apps offer settings for users to stop videos from playing automatically. While there is no way to stop videos from auto-playing on TikTok and Instagram Android apps, you can reduce the data they consume.

How to stop video auto-play on Twitter

• Open your Android Twitter app and tap on your profile (at the top left corner).
• Go to Settings and Privacy.
• Under General tap on Data Usage.
• Under Video tap on Video autoplay.
• You can opt to allow Twitter videos play automatically when using Wi-Fi, or choose Never.

How to stop video auto-play on Facebook

• Open your Android Facebook app and tap on the three horizontal lines (on the far-right of your timeline).
• Tap on Settings & Privacy and tap on Settings next.
• Locate Media and contacts (farther down the list) or search ‘media’ from the search bar at the top.
• Once you open this option, tap on Auto-play and you get to choose your preferred settings.
• ‘Never Auto-play Videos’ means you never have to worry about videos playing automatically as you scroll through you timeline.

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How to enable data saver on Instagram

• Open your Android Instagram app and tap on your profile picture (at the bottom right of your screen).
• Tap on the three horizontal lines (on the far-right of your screen) and tap on the Settings option that appears at the bottom.
• Next, tap on Account and locate Mobile data use.
• You can enable the Data Saver option.

Note that while this does not stop the Instagram video auto-play feature, it slows the load time of videos. It means they won’t load in advance as you open the app. You can additionally reduce the quality of videos to save your data balance.

How to enable data saver on TikTok

• Open your Android TikTok app and tap on the Me icon (at the bottom right of your screen).
• Next, tap the three horizontal dots (at the top right of your screen) to open the Security and privacy page.
• Then, under General, tap on Data Saver and then, enable it.

Note that while this does not stop the TikTok video auto-play feature, it either reduces video quality or takes longer to load them. This TikTok setting, however, does not affect Wi-Fi use.

Using social media does not have to cost too much. With these settings, you can save data as you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok by stopping the video auto-play feature or slowing it down.

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