Bad news it seems. The most relevant post is this: Yes. It is as design. 'autoplay' is disabled for Chrome for Android It seems that Android 4+ changed the requirements for the play method to require user interaction. It's worth nothing that many comments refer to getting it to work with a hack/workaround, only to find it works on some devices and not others. In this example the answer mentions: sample code that works on HTC and Samsung, but not Galaxy Nexus 4.1 (requires user interaction to play) This seems to suggest, even with a workaround you have no guarantee it will actually work on a particular device / version of Android.
Apple have imposed the same restriction in Safari and iOS in general. This can be turned on/off in Chrome using flags.
Chrome will automatically run that content for you. When you want to view a disabled Flash video or other item on a site, right or control-click it and select Run This Plugin from the context menu. May 7, 2018 - Auto-playing videos have started to appear for some users in search success. Auto-playing videos online are among the absolute most.
This is on the user end though and cannot be change in the browser from a website or app. You can also do this in your own app using the api for webview or websettings and make 'getMediaPlaybackRequiresUserGesture(false)' it is by default set to '(true)' In chrome you must go to chrome://flags then go down about 3 screens to Disable gesture requirement for media playback. Android Disable user gesture requirement for playing media elements. Activating this will allow autoplay to work.