Shopify Sense – unmute product page videos by default?

Store Design
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Topic summary

Main issue: Product media videos on product pages default to muted in several Shopify themes (Sense; also reported in Dawn and Ride). Users want videos to play with sound when clicked (manual play), not necessarily autoplay.

Context: Browsers restrict autoplay with sound; videos can only autoplay when muted. However, manual playback should allow audio. In product media, the video tag includes the muted attribute. The theme’s standalone Video block can play with sound, suggesting different handling from product media.

Attempts/outcomes:

  • Editing Liquid files in Sense to remove muting did not work for multiple users.
  • A screenshot-based solution shared by one participant did not resolve the issue for Sense/Ride.
  • Expanse theme: One user reports success by editing snippets/media.liquid (changed “unmuted” to “muted” by deleting “un”), resulting in videos playing with audio but no autoplay. This appears theme-specific.
  • Some paid themes reportedly play audio immediately via non-default players.

Status: No confirmed, general fix for Sense/Dawn/Ride. Open question remains how to unmute product media videos by default on click across these themes.

Summarized with AI on December 21. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hey

The product videos that show up on the product page are muted by default (using the Shopify Sense theme). I’m going through the source files to try to set mute to false. I’ve tried doing that in several liquid files (just searching for “product”, “media”, “video” liquid files), but to no avail. Any hints?

Thanks!

2

this I a generell HTML/Browser restriction if you want to autoplay a video it has to be muted. Only after the users first interaction with the site the audio context is opened a you can turn the sound on. you could achieve something like this with javascript

1 Like
3

To clarify, I meant videos that are played manually, with a click of a button.

I’ve tried other (paid) themes and they do play audio right away – though they don’t use the built-in default media player.

At the same time, I’m seeing <video playsinline=“playsinline” controls=“controls” autoplay=“autoplay” loop=“loop” preload=“none” muted=“muted” in the source code, which indicates that it may indeed be possibly to play them with the sound on.

Weirdly enough, I am able to play videos with sound on when using the Video block available in the theme. However, for the videos that are uploaded as media files for a specific product, they all play muted.

4

I would also be interested in a solution for this problem. I have the Dawn theme, and on a product page, one of the thumbnail is a video, and so when someone click it to play it, the sound is muted by default, and so the user needs to do an extra step and click the sound button to unmute. Anyone has a solution? Thanks

5

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6

I have the exact same problem with the ride theme.

Did you manage to solve it?

solution from Yurila isn’t working.

7

tried it, didnt work, i use sense theme

8

We use the expanse theme and when i went into edit code, went snippets, then media.liquid folder then on line 55 or so i just changed unmuted to muted (deleted ‘un’) and now my videos play with audio although user has an extra step as they don’t autoplay but that’s o.k. for us.

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I have about no technical expertise so take with a grain of salt (but worked for me)