Can you autoplay HTML5 videos on the iPad?

Just set

webView.mediaPlaybackRequiresUserAction = NO;

The autoplay works for me on iOS.

I want to start by saying by saying that I realize this question is old and already has an accepted answer; but, as an unfortunate internet user that used this question as a means to end only to be proven wrong shortly after (but not before I upset my client a little) I want to add my thoughts and suggestions.

While @DSG and @Giona are correct, and there is nothing wrong with their answers, there is a creative mechanism you can employ to "get around," so to speak, this limitation. That is not say that I'm condoning circumvention of this feature, quite the contrary, but just some mechanisms so that a user still "feels" as if a video or audio file is "auto playing."

The quick work around is hide a video tag somewhere on the mobile page, since I built a responsive site I only do this for smaller screens. The video tag (HTML and jQuery examples):

HTML

<video id="dummyVideo" src="" preload="none" width="1" height="2"></video>

jQuery

var $dummyVideo = $("<video />", {
  id: "dummyVideo",
  src: "",
  preload: "none",
  width: "1",
  height: "2"
});

With that hidden on the page, when a user "clicks" to watch a movie (still user interaction, there is no way to get around that requirement) instead of navigating to a secondary watch page I load the hidden video. This mainly works because the media tag isn't really used but instead promoted to a Quicktime instance so having a visible video element isn't necessary at all. In the handler for "click" (or "touchend" on mobile).

$(".movie-container").on("click", function() {
  var url = $(this).data("stream-url");
  $dummyVideo.attr("src", url);
  $dummyVideo.get(0).load(); // required if src changed after page load
  $dummyVideo.get(0).play();
});

And viola. As far as UX goes, a user clicks on a video to play and Quicktime opens playing the video they chose. This remains within the limitation that videos can only be played via user action so I'm not forcing data on anyone who isn't deciding to watch a video with this service. I discovered this when trying to figure out how exactly Youtube pulled this off with their mobile which is essentially some really nice Javascript page building and fancy element hiding like in the case of the video tag.

tl;dr Here is a somewhat "workaround" to try and create an "autoplay" UX feature on iOS devices without going above and beyond Apple's limitations and still having users decide if they want to watch a video (or audio most likey, though I've not tested) themselves without having one just loaded without their permission.

Also, to the person who commented that is from sleep.fm, this still unfortunately would not have been a solution to your issues which is time based audio play back.

I hope someone finds this information useful, it would have saved me a week of bad news delivery to a client that was adamant that they have this feature and I was glad to find a way to deliver it in the end.

EDIT

Further finding indicate the above workaround is for iPhone/iPod devices only. The iPad plays video in Safari before it's been full screened so you'll need some mechanism to resize the video on click before playing or else you'll end up with audio and no video.

iOS 10 update

The ban on autoplay has been lifted as of iOS 10 - but with some restrictions (e.g. A can be autoplayed if there is no audio track).

To see a full list of these restrictions, see the official docs: https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/

iOS 9 and before

As of iOS 6.1, it is no longer possible to auto-play videos on the iPad.

My assumption as to why they've disabled the auto-play feature?

Well, as many device owners have data usage/bandwidth limits on their devices, I think Apple felt that the user themselves should decide when they initiate bandwidth usage.

---

After a bit of research I found the following extract in the Apple documentation in regard to auto-play on iOS devices to confirm my assumption:

"Apple has made the decision to disable the automatic playing of video on iOS devices, through both script and attribute implementations.

In Safari, on iOS (for all devices, including iPad), where the user may be on a cellular network and be charged per data unit, preload and auto-play are disabled. No data is loaded until the user initiates it." - Apple documentation.

Here is a separate warning featured on the Safari HTML5 Reference page about why embedded media cannot be played in Safari on iOS:

Warning: To prevent unsolicited downloads over cellular networks at the user’s expense, embedded media cannot be played automatically in Safari on iOS—the user always initiates playback. A controller is automatically supplied on iPhone or iPod touch once playback in initiated, but for iPad you must either set the controls attribute or provide a controller using JavaScript.

---

What this means (in terms of code) is that Javascript's play() and load() methods are inactive until the user initiates playback, unless the play() or load() method is triggered by user action (e.g. a click event).

Basically, a user-initiated play button works, but an onLoad="play()" event does not.

For example, this would play the movie:

<input type="button" value="Play" onclick="document.myMovie.play()">

Whereas the following would do nothing on iOS:

<body onload="document.myMovie.play()">