How can i auto play videos in Dawn theme?

Topic summary

Goal: enable autoplaying, looping, soundless product videos in Shopify’s Dawn theme and remove visible play/pause controls.

Proposed approaches:

  • Add a Custom Liquid section and embed an HTML
  • Modify theme templates: product-thumbnail.liquid and product-media.liquid to pass autoplay: true and adjust conditions so non-image media autoplays. Full-file replacements were suggested with caution about breaking existing customizations.

Video hosting notes:

  • Shopify Files upload works but has ~20 MB limit; larger files can be hosted externally (e.g., Google Cloud). YouTube/Vimeo embeds don’t satisfy native autoplay in these spots.

Issues raised:

  • Mobile: video not fitting, opacity overlay, visible pause icon, and image/video misalignment.
  • Collection grid: “second image on hover” shows the video thumbnail but does not autoplay; acknowledged as not covered by the provided code and possibly a Dawn limitation/bug.
  • Layout questions: centering a reduced-size video and placing text beside it.

Status:

  • Autoplay on product pages reported as working for multiple users.
  • Hover-autoplay on collection tiles and some mobile UI/controls remain unresolved. Discussion ongoing; several users requested further guidance or shop-specific review.
Summarized with AI on December 29. AI used: gpt-5.

I have added this to new Dawn theme but my product video’s on mobile view are now out of line with images. Any advice?