If you were a heavy user of the earlier version of QuickTime Player, you might have relied on QuickTime to automatically start playing when you opened or launched a QuickTime file. The Autoplay feature is especially important if you use your Mac and QuickTime in a home entertainment environment. The new version of QuickTime ships without this handy feature enabled, but you can remedy the situation using the Terminal application and a single line of code.
QuickTime X vs. QuickTime 7
QuickTime is a media player, able to handle video, pictures, audio, basic multimedia capture, and editing. It probably sees the most use as a video player, allowing Mac users to view various video formats, including movies made on iOS devices or downloaded from various video sites. QuickTime X offers a more streamlined interface than QuickTime 7.x and a much more robust performance. It also has the advantage of combining some of the features of the old QuickTime Pro package—specifically, the ability to edit and export QuickTime files. As a result, QuickTime X lets you capture video from any camera attached to your Mac, perform basic editing functions, and export the results in a number of formats that can be used by your Mac or iOS devices.
Restore Autoplay to QuickTime X
You can add the Autoplay functionality back to QuickTime X using Terminal.
Disable Autoplay in QuickTime X
If you later decide you’d rather return QuickTime X to its default behavior of not automatically starting to play a QuickTime file when you open or launch it, you can do so by once again using the Terminal application.
QuickTime Player 7
Although QuickTime X has been included with every version of OS X since Snow Leopard, Apple kept QuickTime Player 7 up to date through macOS Mojave (10.14) for users who needed support for some of the older multimedia formats, including QTVR and Interactive QuickTime Movies. QuickTime 7 offered more advanced editing and export functions than are available in QuickTime X. Mac users could run both QuickTime Player 10 and QuickTime Player 7 concurrently through macOS Mojave.
