I find the autoplay so annoying because it hides the thumbnail which was carefully designed to communicate why I should click on the video and replaces it with, usually, a talking head or stock footage. Often the video gets inexplicably added to my watch history, and if I do choose to click on it I have to go back to the beginning because I missed the start of the audio
Fortunately, there's an actual setting to get rid of that. Found out yesterday, when trying to fix the OP problem (which youtube sadly forced on me).
That's extremely depressing on 27" 4k screen. Give me a density setting! I want compact thumbnails and to glance at a pack of vids at once.