How to Change Video Settings on the Facebook App

Tired of videos blasting sound unexpectedly or eating up your mobile data? Taking control of the Facebook app’s video settings is one of the quickest ways to improve your browsing experience and, for creators, ensure your content looks its best. This guide will walk you through exactly where to find and how to adjust every important video setting, from autoplay and sound to video upload quality.

Why Your Facebook Video Settings Matter

You might think of the settings menu as a "set it and forget it" feature, but when it comes to video, those toggles have a real impact on your daily app usage. Fine-tuning them offers several practical benefits for both casual scrollers and serious content marketers.

For everyday users, the biggest wins are:

• Saving Mobile Data: The default settings on Facebook can be a major drain on your data plan. By stopping videos from automatically playing when you're not on Wi-Fi, you can save a significant amount of data each month.
• A Quieter, Less Intrusive Experience: Nobody enjoys a video suddenly playing at full volume in a quiet office or on public transit. Adjusting sound and autoplay settings puts you back in control of your environment.
• Conserving Battery Life: Constantly loading and playing video content in the background uses more processing power and, consequently, more battery. Taming autoplay helps your phone last longer between charges.

For creators, brands, and social media managers, these settings are about preserving quality and professionalism:

• Ensuring High-Quality Uploads: Facebook often defaults to uploading videos in Standard Definition (SD) to save server space and speed up processing. If you don't manually enable HD uploads, your carefully edited, high-resolution video will appear compressed and blurry to your audience, undermining your brand's credibility.
• Understanding the Viewer Experience: Knowing that many users disable autoplay or start videos with the sound off changes how you should create content. This insight pushes you to create videos with strong opening visuals and add captions to grab attention without sound.

Finding the Video Settings Menu (The First Hurdle)

Facebook isn't always known for having the most intuitive layout, and these settings can feel a bit buried. The exact steps can vary slightly depending on your device (iOS or Android) and the current version of the app, but the general path is the same. Let's find it together.

For iPhone (iOS) Users:

1. Open the Facebook app and tap the Menu tab in the bottom-right corner (it looks like your profile picture with three horizontal lines).
2. Scroll down and tap Settings & Privacy to expand the drop-down menu.
3. Tap on Settings.
4. Scroll down to the Preferences section and tap on Media. This is where you'll find all the key video and sound controls.

For Android Users:

1. Open the Facebook app and tap the Menu icon in the top-right corner (your profile picture and three horizontal lines).
2. Scroll down and tap on Settings & Privacy to reveal more options.
3. Tap on Settings.
4. Scroll down until you find the Preferences section and tap on Media. You’re now in the right place to adjust your video settings.

Now that we’ve navigated the maze, let's start customizing these settings to fit your needs.

Mastering Autoplay Settings: Take Back Control of Your Feed

Autoplay is probably the single most impactful video setting. When a video automatically starts playing as you scroll past it, it’s using your bandwidth and your battery. Here’s how to choose what works best for you.

Inside the Media settings, you'll see a section called Autoplay. Here you have three options:

1. On Mobile Data and Wi-Fi

This is usually the default setting. Videos will automatically begin playing whenever you have an internet connection, whether you're using your cellular plan or a Wi-Fi network. While it creates a "seamless" viewing experience where content is always in motion, it’s also the most data-intensive option. If you have an unlimited data plan and don't mind the constant motion, this might be fine for you. However, for most people, this setting consumes data unnecessarily.

2. On Wi-Fi Only

This is the most popular choice for a reason. It strikes a perfect balance between convenience and conservation. With this setting, videos will still autoplay when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network (at home, in the office, at a coffee shop), but they will not play automatically when you’re using your mobile data. You'll stop burning through your data plan while scrolling on the go, but you still get the fluid, autoplay experience when bandwidth isn’t a concern. To watch a video while on data, you simply tap the play button.

3. Never Autoplay Videos

This option gives you complete control. No video will ever play without your explicit permission - you must tap on it to start it, regardless of your connection type. This setting is the absolute best for saving data and battery life. It also creates a much calmer, more intentional browsing experience. If you find the constantly moving feed distracting or want to be highly selective about what you watch, this is the setting for you.

Controlling Video Sound With One Tap

Just below the Autoplay options in the Media section, you’ll find a simple toggle for sound: "Videos start with sound."

When this setting is on, any video that autoplays (based on your settings above) will also start with the sound on. If you’ve ever had your phone unexpectedly announce a talking head or blast music in a quiet room, this setting is the culprit.

When you turn this setting off, all videos will start muted. You can see the video playing, but you won't hear anything until you tap the sound icon on the video itself. This is often called "sound-off" viewing, and it’s how a majority of users on social media consume video content. For a better, less disruptive experience, it's highly recommended to toggle this off.

How to Upload HD Videos: A Must-Do for Creators

This is arguably the most important setting for anyone using Facebook for professional reasons. It's frustrating to pour hours into shooting and editing a beautiful video, only to have Facebook compress it into a pixelated mess. Luckily, the fix is easy - you just have to know where to look.

In the same Media settings menu, scroll down to the Video and Photo Settings section. You'll see two toggles:

• Upload HD (for Video)
• Upload HD (for Photos)

By default, both of these are often turned off. To make sure your content always looks crisp and professional, you should turn them both on.

When enabled, the Facebook app will upload your video files in a much higher resolution. The upload might take a bit longer, especially on a slower connection, but the massive improvement in quality is more than worth the wait. A clear, sharp video signals quality and care, while a blurry, compressed video can make your brand look unprofessional and outdated. For any business, marketer, or content creator, this is a non-negotiable setting.

Reducing Data Usage Even Further

Beyond changing your autoplay settings, Facebook offers a dedicated Data Saver mode. This setting works in concert with your other choices to minimize data consumption. When Data Saver is enabled, it automatically reduces the visual quality of images and stops videos from autoplaying.

You can find this toggle right at the top of the Media menu. By enabling Data Saver, you're telling the app to prioritize low data usage above all else. This can be a great option if you have a very limited data plan or if you're in an area with poor connectivity. You can always override it by tapping to load a specific photo in higher quality or by pressing play on a video manually.

For the most data-conscious setup, combine Data Saver with the "Never Autoplay Videos" setting. This will give you maximum control over your data usage within the Facebook app.

Final Thoughts

Taking a few minutes to adjust your Facebook video settings puts you firmly in control of your data usage, battery life, and overall browsing experience. For creators and marketers, enabling HD uploads is a simple but powerful step toward presenting your content in the best possible light, ensuring your hard work looks just as good on your feed as it did on your editing timeline.

Optimizing your video on Facebook is a great first step, but we know brand building happens across multiple platforms. At Postbase, we built our tool specifically for the demands of short-form video, making it simple to upload your HD content once and schedule it flawlessly across Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. We handle the formatting and publish reliably every time, so you can spend less time wrestling with clunky tools and more time creating great content.