Even though I had disabled all 'restore' applications features, macos sometimes decides to 'start' browsers BEFORE logging in after a restart AND those start auto-playing audio from whatever was paused before the reboot (or many days before).
Since then I went rather deep disabling that feature, but I never trusted it.
To clarify, because commenters seem to be misunderstanding my point: I’m not defending the functionality, I think it’s wrong. My sole quarrel is with the characterisation that Apple is selling it as a feature, when they’re not. Let’s not ascribe wrong (or at best unknown) motivations to behaviours, as that makes is less likely they will be fixed.
It's like being literally unable to dog
Opening a laptop, even if the last activity was blaring obnoxious carnival music, should _allow_, not _demand_ the user to resume their last function - which was explicitly to _pause_ the laptop, by closing the lid.
If I close the lid, I am done with the computer and video; it is obvious that I am done right now - the OS/browser would be alerted of LidDown, and I would expect the OS to tell the browser to Pause (via some new javascript media API that I am sure exists), pagefile ram if possible/needed, and dump all console.logs to a temp directory, in case restarting from hibernation goes awry.
If I open the lid, I am attempting to use the computer. The previous quest can be pertinent or moot; but it would be oddly assumptive (against the ethos of general computing) to _automagically_ resume (especially a paused) playback just from first button press - at least give me the option to explore, format, or rename the thing.
It has never happened before...
Windows 7 with Youtube can figure out - even with hibernation breaking audio/bluetooth on windows - then surely the most expensive company and OS 15 years later has made an inkling of progress (if that was ever their intention)