Facebook has announced plans to automatically play sound on the videos that pop up in your News Feed.

The move is unlikely to prove popular with the vast majority of users, but video content has become increasingly important to the social network.

"As people watch more video on phones, they’ve come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on,” it wrote in a blog post.

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"After testing sound on in News Feed and hearing positive feedback, we're slowly bringing it to more people. With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in News Feed, bringing those videos to life."

Though the feature will be enabled by default, there are ways to avoid potentially embarrassing yourself in public.

First of all, videos won’t autoplay with sound if your phone is switched to silent, and they won’t override the audio if you happen to be playing music through an app like Spotify or Apple Music.

You can, however, also disable autoplay with sound in the app’s settings.

On iOS, users need to hit the menu button at the bottom right corner of the screen, then navigate to Settings > Account Settings > Sounds > Videos in News Feed Start With Sound.