Media element autoplay property does not work

[David_Mitjana_Castro]

Bug Description

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1. Summary

Playback doesn’t start automatically when mediaElement.autoplay is set to true.

Note that we’ve always had this issue and we’ve had to do some workarounds to make it work, as we have scenarios where we need to start playing automatically and scenarios where we just need to load playback.

Bug Severity
Select one that applies

• Impacts operation of app
• Blocks current development
• Improvement suggestion
• Issue with documentation (If selected, please share the doc link and describe the issue)
• Other

2. Steps to Reproduce

• set mediaElement.autoplay = true
• play something

3. Observed Behavior

Playback doesn’t start automatically. We need to call mediaElement.play() to start playback.

4. Expected Behavior

Playback starts automatically if mediaElement.autoplay = true

4.a Possible Root Cause & Temporary Workaround

Workaround: if mediaElement.autoplay is true, then call mediaElement.play() to “fake” the autoplay.

5. Logs or crash report

6. Environment

Please fill out the fields related to your bug below:

• SDK Version: 0.20.2975

• App State: Foreground

• OS Information
  Please ssh into the device via kepler exec vda shelland copy the output from cat /etc/os-releaseinto the answer section below. Note, if you don’t have a simulator running or device attached kepler exec vda shell will respond with vda: no devices/emulators found

  NAME="OS"
  OE_VERSION="4.0.0"
  OS_MAJOR_VERSION="1"
  OS_MINOR_VERSION="1"
  RELEASE_ID="10"
  OS_VERSION="1.1"
  BRANCH_CODE="TV Ship"
  BUILD_DESC="OS 1.1 (TV Ship/98)"
  BUILD_FINGERPRINT="4.0.152680.0(3072cab629675a74)/98N:user-external/release-keys"
  BUILD_VARIANT="user-external"
  BUILD_TAGS="release-keys"
  BUILD_DATE="Tue Aug 26 03:25:49 UTC 2025"
  BUILD_TIMESTAMP="1756178749"
  VERSION_NUMBER="1001010009850"
  

7. Example Code Snippet / Screenshots / Screengrabs

N/A

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Playback Issues

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If this is a playback issue, please provide your VPKG and/or content URL, any pre-conditions (like geo-location) [Share privately with your Amazon contact] , and let us know if it’s x86 or arm7.

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• Player SDK: [Bitmovin, Shaka, ...]
• Player SDK Version: [e.g. 1.23]
  • Audio Codecs: [AAC, ...]
  • Video Codecs: [h.264, mp4]
  • Manifest Types: [m3u8, dash, etc ..]

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Q: Are there any special headers required to reproduce the issue you are facing?

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Provide Screenshots / Screengrabs / Logs. Please include as much information as you can that will help debug.

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Additional Context

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Any Additional Context you would like to provide?
Add any other relevant information, such as recent updates to the SDK, dependencies, or device OS that may affect the bug.

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[Amz_Rsk]

Hi @David_Mitjana_Castro ,

Could you please provide logs for the issue you have observed?

Thanks,
Rohit

[David_Mitjana_Castro]

I’ve just found the issue on our side → we were setting the media element’s autoplay property before calling the media element’s initialize() method, so the player was trying to play before initializing and it failed - but no errors were shown.

It makes sense to first “initialize” the media element and then set the autoplay property, but it’s not straightforward to guess this if it’s not highlighted in the docs, even though the docs first call the initialize() method and then set the autoplay property.

Would be good to have a comment added to the Media Player Walkthrough docs so it’s clear that it’s key to set the autoplay property after calling the media element’s initialize() method. Also the player could throw a warning log if autoplay is set before initializing the media element.