A common Safari issue reported is that users can see the pause button displayed on top of the video, and sometimes a greyscale too on rollover. However, everything works as expected on Chrome and other browsers.
Well, it only turned out to be Low Power Mode being active. Disable it and the problem is fixed.
Why does Safari show play/pause buttons on videos?
If the controls tag is not present on the video tag, and it works as expected on other browsers. Then don’t lose time testing on multiple versions. My contact was saying her Safari version is 26.2. It just turned out to be that she had “Low Power Mode”.
“Low Power Mode reduces energy use to increase battery life. In macOS Sequoia 15.1 or later.”
It’s also common for mobile: iOS Safari will show the play/pause buttons to video tag when the phone is running in low power mode.
Disabling low power mode will fix the issue.
How to change the Low Power Mode settings on Mac
It can be enabled/disabled via System Settings > Battery
Hope this saves someone some silly headache and losing time. Happy days!