British holidaymakers going abroad are being urged to change one setting on their mobile phone before boarding their flight.
There’s plenty to think about before jetting off, like double checking your passport and making sure you have your boarding pass, but it’s important not to neglect your phone settings or you could end up racking up a hefty bill. According to travel experts, switching off autoplay on your phone could be the difference between a smooth, budget-friendly holiday and an expensive roaming bill. If autoplay is switched on on your phone while data roaming is enabled, it can quietly eat up your data in the background from the moment you land at your destination and start scrolling.
Travel expert Georgia Brivida at eSIM provider Sim Local explains: “Autoplay is a feature that automatically plays videos as you scroll through apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, often without you even tapping play.
“It’s fine when you’re connected to Wi-Fi at home but when you’re abroad and paying per megabyte, it can quietly burn through your data in no time just from using your phone like you normally would. One small change before takeoff can save you a big headache later. It’s a simple fix that makes all the difference when you land.”
When the feature is enabled it can end up using your mobile data much faster than you might realise, with just 10 minutes streaming videos on YouTube and Netflix using up to 100MB, while scrolling through social media sites like TikTok and Instagram can use around 20MB, according to Sim Local.
Web browsing uses slightly less at around 10MB in just 10 minutes and using Spotify or podcast streaming can use up to 15MB of data.
So if you spend 30 minutes scrolling through TikTok while waiting for your taxi when you land, that’s roughly 60MB of data gone and watching just a few YouTube videos en route to your hotel will burn through another 200MB.
Over several days of your holiday it is all too easy to rack up several gigabytes of data and if without the right roaming plan, you could be looking at a phone bill of around £120 or more just from scrolling.
But luckily turning off autoplay is very simple and it’s worth doing to save yourself an expensive bill, plus it’ll give you more control over when your data is used.
To switch it off on iOS (iPhone), simply go to Settings, then Accessibility and tap on ‘Motion’. Find the toggle switch for Auto-Play Video Previews and turn it off
On Android phones, go to Settings then scroll down and select Google, select All Services, then tap ‘Search, Assistant & Voice’ and select ‘Other Settings’. From here click on Autoplay video previews and select ‘never’.