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For the last few days, my VLC media player has not been responding at all. When I try to double click any file or even run VLC media player without any file, it just doesn't open up.

I tried to open it through terminal, and it was working fine, but there were no option coming on the VLC media player screen and also if I close the terminal, VLC media player closes automatically. How do I make VLC media player back to its original way so that I can access any file through VLC media player?

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    3 Answers 3

    Reset to default
    19

    You can reset your VLC media player settings by renaming your current VLC media player configuration folder.
    Execute the following command in a terminal:

    mv ~/.config/vlc ~/.config/vlc.old

    If VLC media player still does not open correctly you can try reinstalling VLC media player:

    sudo apt-get remove --purge vlc sudo apt-get install vlc

    Before running VLC media player , make sure it is not still running:

    ps ax | grep vlc

    This should not return anything. If it does execute the commands below until the ps command keeps quiet (does not return anything any more). Start with the first, and then use the next until it gets killed successfully:

    1. pkill vlc
    2. killall vlc
    3. killall -9 vlc

    Notes:

    • You can probably delete your old configuration folder with rm -rf ~/.config/vlc.old.
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    5
    • i am not able to kill running vlc....Is there any way to force kill it through terminal??
      – vivek
      CommentedOct 13, 2012 at 17:48
    • I updated the answer to add the kill commands. Make sure to use the correct pid of the running vlc process.
      – rosch
      CommentedOct 13, 2012 at 18:01
    • Thank dude.... u saved me...actually kill command was not able to stop the process.....i have to use the system monitor....and then after installing it worked....u made my day....cheers...
      – vivek
      CommentedOct 13, 2012 at 18:02
    • I replaced the kill commands with killall which only needs the process name (vlc). The last one should generally kill it. If this helped you might want to accept the answer, thanks :-).
      – rosch
      CommentedOct 13, 2012 at 18:15
    • Thank you so much. Continue playback was not working and tweaked a few settings and VLC won't open then. Changing .config file worked and continue playback works. Thanks again.
      – Master_Nachi
      CommentedMay 29, 2021 at 8:22
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    I recently had a similar issue with my VLC and I found a more elegant solution to this problem and thought I should share it here. You can simply reset VLC settings by typing the following in the terminal

    vlc --reset-config

    Hope this helps.

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      1

      muyisco's answer worked for me, and it is also on https://wiki.videolan.org.

      In GNU/Linux, delete the ~/.config/vlc and ~/.cache/vlc folders or execute vlc --reset-config in a terminal.

      Old versions of VLC had the data stored in ~/.vlc.

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