this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Need help with VLC and using one instance (fedia.io)
submitted 3 days ago by Rhaedas@fedia.io to c/linux@programming.dev
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Running Ubuntu 22.04:

I've tried searching for a solution to this, but there's way too many false positives. I know you can enable/disable using a single instance in two places, but that's not my issue. If I open a video the first time, VLC works fine. If I have both the "only use one instance" off, I can click on other videos and they run too. But if I have any combination of those boxes checked I can only play the first video, and to play a new video I have to manually close the VLC player.

What I want to happen is to have one player spawn, but any new video will run in that player, overriding the existing video. Is that just not possible? I don't want to have to close the window every time I run something new, and I don't want to have to go back and lose a whole bunch of separate VLC instances when I'm done.

Update: I found the solution, and I should have tried it first before posting. Oh well, at least I didn't leave anyone who might find this hanging like a DenverCoder9.

Being Ubuntu, VLC was installed via Snap (I can't recall if I did it or it's default). I suppose I should look into the de-Snap process I've seen mentioned before, as I've also had a few non-crash errors since running Ubuntu where snap was the source.

So the solution was to install the Debian version in terminal, not Snap. It works like I expect and wanted, and I can run video after video and it uses the same window.

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[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

That's how it's supposed to work, so we're gonna need a lot more information about your environment. Logs would help too.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago

I'll be glad to give more info. I'm not sure where to find the logs to tell you what VLC is doing. See my other comment on the comparison of a browser - I want it to use VLC as if I was browsing websites where it just loads into the existing window.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 0 points 3 days ago

Try Haruna or Celluloid

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So you're trying to only get it to behave one way with one type of file, but different ways with other types of files? Not sure if I'm reading that right.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago

I'm trying to get any new video I click on to play in the existing instance of VLC after running a first video. Not in a new instance. If VLC is open no other video will ever use that instance. It's like if you load a new webpage in a browser but have to either close the existing browser window first or load into a new tab or window, and I find it difficult to believe that's an accepted behavior.