Settings

Settings

The Settings window holds every option of VLC Redesign that the design shows, plus a few of VLC's own options under Advanced Options. Open it with ⋯ → Settings or Ctrl+P.

The pages

The sidebar groups the 13 pages under three headings. The title in the window's header is the one in the third column.

Group	Page	Header title	What it holds
App	General	Global Settings	Language, layout direction, theme and accent colour; update check and dialogs; logs, Developer mode, reset.
App	Interface	Interface Settings	The window, the playback controls, notifications and the tray icon, the playlist tree, the player bar, text contrast, skins.
App	Privacy	Privacy Settings	History and resume points, what VLC fetches from the internet, Last.fm.
App	Controls	Mouse, Keyboard & Remote Controls	Keyboard shortcuts, skip lengths, the mouse on the video, the web remote.
Media	Playback	Playback Preferences	Resuming, start and speed, preferred tracks, repeat and shuffle, seeking, discs and damaged files.
Media	Video	Video Defaults	Video output, picture adjustment, deinterlacing, framing (aspect ratio, crop, zoom), snapshots.
Media	Audio	Audio Defaults	Output device, volume, loudness, equalizer and effects, audio tracks, visualizations.
Media	Subtitles	Subtitle Defaults	Subtitle languages and encoding, automatic loading, the look of subtitles, timing, on-screen messages.
Media	Library	Playlists, Folders & Files	How files open (one window, queue or replace, folders), metadata and artwork, the media library.
System	Network	Network Connections & Security	Buffering, the HTTP proxy, certificates and ciphers.
System	Performance	Performance Settings	Hardware decoding, post-processing, threads, process priority.
System	Recording	Recording, Casting & Streaming Out	Where recordings go, casting quality, stream output.
System	Extensions	Add-ons & Scripts	Add-ons and VLC's plugin list.

How the window works

Layout

• The header has a Search box on the left, the page title in the middle and a close button (X) on the right.
• Each page is divided into sections (Appearance, Startup, Window…). Most rows have an (i) icon: hover it (or the label) to read what the option does. When a long translation cuts a label short, the tooltip shows the whole label first.
• A page without any option in this build is left out of the sidebar. Extensions is always listed. If a page has nothing to show, it reads No settings are available for this category on this VLC installation.
• A row only appears when this build of VLC has the option behind it. Rows that depend on a module or on the operating system are noted on each page.

Saving: no Apply button

• Changes are kept when the window closes: the X button, Esc, or quitting VLC while the window is open.
• The theme, accent colour, interface language and layout direction preview at once. So do the Picture sliders of the Video page and the subtitles' Vertical position. Every other change is applied when the window closes. Most of them then take effect at once (the log, the web remote, Last.fm, the keyboard shortcuts, the tray icon, the window opacity, the default speed and so on). Options that VLC reads when a media opens (aspect ratio, deinterlacing, tracks…) take effect with the next media.
• If VLC refuses a change, the window stays open and an error bar appears at the bottom of the page. A typical message is "… changed outside the settings. Discard your changes to see its new value.". When saving failed, the bar has a Discard changes button: it drops every pending change of the option rows and closes the window. The Appearance choices (language, layout direction, theme, accent colour) and Developer mode are still kept.

Applies the next time VLC starts

Only three rows need VLC to start again, because they decide what VLC is made of. Once you change one, the grey note "Applies the next time VLC starts" appears under it:

• Additional command line options (General › Advanced Options)
• Use a custom skin (Interface › Skin)
• Use the media library (Library › Metadata & Artwork)

Advanced Options

A bar at the bottom of every page except Privacy. Click it to open or close the extra rows. It is closed each time the window opens and each time you change page. A page whose bar has nothing under it shows No advanced options on this page.

Developer mode

The Developer mode toggle (General › Diagnostics) shows the expert rows, marked Developer mode on these pages, under the Advanced Options of their page. It also adds All VLC options to the General page, which opens VLC's classic preferences with every option of VLC and its modules.

Dimmed and empty rows

A dimmed row (drawn at 30 % opacity) cannot be changed until another setting allows it. A dimmed toggle shows OFF.

Row	Dimmed while
Interface › Fullscreen controls sensitivity	Show controls in fullscreen is off.
Library › Add to the playlist instead of replacing it	Both Only allow one VLC window and Apply to files opened from the file manager are off.
Network › Local files, Discs, Network streams, Live capture	Buffering is not Custom (the fields are also empty).

Some fields stay empty on purpose: the web remote's Port while Web remote control is off (Controls), and the three Last.fm fields while Submit played tracks to last.fm is off (Privacy). A field shows its value again while you edit it.

Search

The search box looks through every page at once; the header then reads Search results. It matches the text of a row's label, its section name and its (i) help text, not VLC's internal option names (search Shuffle, not random).

• Rows under Advanced Options are included. Developer-mode rows are included only while Developer mode is on.
• A row shown on two pages (the scroll-wheel rows of Controls, the time-shift size of Video) is listed once.
• The Appearance block, Developer mode, the Last.fm block and the subtitle Second Language & Online Subtitles block appear when their own labels match.
• Keyboard shortcuts are searched by the name of their action. Up to 8 matching actions are listed with their key; a button opens the action in the Keyboard Shortcuts window. More matches add a row "N more matching shortcuts" with Show all.
• No match: No matching settings.
• The Advanced Options bar, the Picture sliders, the Extensions page and Clear history now are not shown while searching.

Where the settings are stored

File	Holds
vlcrc	VLC's own options: everything marked with a VLC option name such as snapshot-format on these pages.
vlc\vlc-qt-interface.ini	The interface's own settings: the rows marked redesign/…, the theme, profiles, window state.

Both live in VLC Redesign's settings folder: the portable folder next to vlc.exe, or %APPDATA%\VLC Redesign when that folder cannot be used. General › Advanced Options › Open configurations folder opens it. See also Where are my settings?.

Rows that stand for several options

Some rows of the design are not a single VLC option. They read and write the options behind them:

Row	Options written
Privacy › Remember the playback position	restore-playback-pos (off = Never; on = Ask, or keeps Always)
Playback › Repeat	repeat (One) and loop (All)
Playback › When playback finishes	play-and-exit
Playback › Seek precisely	input-fast-seek, inverted
Controls › Reverse scroll direction	hotkeys-y-wheel-mode and hotkeys-x-wheel-mode (Seek stored as 3 instead of 2)
Controls › Web remote control	http in extraintf
Privacy › Submit played tracks to last.fm	audioscrobbler in extraintf (removed from control too when turned off)
Interface › Use a custom skin	intf (skins2)
Video › Size	snapshot-width, and snapshot-height when needed (see Video)
Audio › Night mode	the compressor in audio-filter with its ratio, threshold and makeup gain

Changed in 0.3.1

Found while documenting every option:

Page	Row	Change
Video › Output	Stop the screensaver during playback	A list: Never / When fullscreen / Always. The toggle it replaced showed When fullscreen as on and lost it when switched.
Video › Snapshots	Size	Choosing a width no longer stretches the snapshot: the height follows it (0).
Video › Advanced Options	Snapshot height (0: proportional, -1: original)	The label now says what 0 and −1 do.
Controls › Mouse	Single click on the video	One Play / Pause choice and Nothing; the two choices that did the same are merged.
Performance › Smooth Playback	Increase the priority of the process	Renamed from Give VLC real-time priority, which is not what it does.
Library › Opening Files	Apply to files opened from the file manager	No longer dimmed: it works on its own. Add to the playlist instead of replacing it is available when either one-window option is on.
Network › Proxy	HTTP proxy	Empty now really uses the Windows proxy, as its field says.
Network › Buffering	Buffering	The preset row no longer shows an (i) icon.

New in 0.3.0

Page	Row	What it does
General › Startup	Show confirmation and error dialogs (on)	The errors of VLC at the bottom of the window, and the questions before removing media or playlists. Off: neither (deleting a file from the disk still asks).
General › Advanced Options	Additional command line options	Options VLC reads at every start, as if written on its command line.
Interface › Playback Controls	Show controls in fullscreen (on)	The controls show in fullscreen when the mouse moves; off, only the keyboard shows them.
Interface › Playlist	Show the playlist as a tree (off)	The play queue under the folders (or websites) its media come from.
Interface › Player Bar	Always show the player bar (off)	The bar stays at the bottom of Home and the library while nothing plays.
Interface › Accessibility	Increase text contrast (off)	The dim texts of the design drawn brighter, to the WCAG AA contrast.
Interface › Advanced Options	Show cover art in the window when playing audio (on)	Renamed from Show the VLC cone when there is no video.
Audio › Visualization	Visualizer	Spectrometer, Scope, Spectrum, Waveform and VU meter by name, then VLC's other visualizations.
Audio › Effects	Equalizer preset	Starts with None; each preset shows its curve.
Subtitles › Tracks & Languages	Preferred language	The row of the design picks the language of the subtitles.
Subtitles › Second Language & Online Subtitles	the block	The second language, the online search and the subtitle services, now after the sections of the design.

Also new in 0.3.0: almost every setting applies without a restart (only the three rows listed above need one), settings changed just before quitting VLC are kept, and every page is drawn as the design draws it, compared with its frame pixel for pixel (see Design check).

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