If you are flying, turn off this telephone function to avoid high costs

Photo: Pexels/Niklas Jeromin

A holiday is expensive enough, so the last thing you want is to be faced with unexpected costs. And yet this can happen: many travellers forget to turn off an important function on their phone before flying, which can easily cost them hundreds of euros in roaming costs.

This is a feature on your phone that many people don't even realize is turned on, namely the autoplay function. This is a function where a video or other media content automatically starts playing when you open a web page or when another item has finished playing. You have this function in apps like YouTube or Instagram, but also on websites.

According to Georgia Brivida, travel expert at Sim Local, this feature can’t hurt at home. “It’s fine if you’re on your Wi-Fi at home, but if you’re abroad and paying by the megabyte, you can run out of data in no time. Just by using your phone as you normally would.” When you’re waiting for your bags at the airport and trying to kill time by scrolling through social media or streaming a video, your data usage can quickly add up.

Streaming a video on a platform like YouTube or Netflix can quickly consume 100 MB of data for just 10 minutes. Scrolling on TikTok can consume around 20 MB, while surfing the internet can quickly consume 10 MB. Listening to music or a podcast can consume around 15 MB. If you consult Google several times on an average holiday, use Google Maps, make a quick call via WhatsApp and regularly scroll through Instagram, you can quickly consume 300 MB in one day. If you do this the rest of the week, the costs can quickly add up.

You can easily avoid these high costs by turning off the autoplay function on your phone. To do this, you have to go to the different apps and manually turn off the autoplay function. For example, with YouTube, go to the YouTube app, click on your profile icon, go to settings, general and turn off 'play in feeds' or 'autoplay'. With social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram or X, open the app, go to your profile page, look for settings for 'video' or 'media' and turn off autoplay of videos.