The VideoLAN Forums

Why does VLC keep a record of some recently played files in org.videolan.vlc.plist even after VLC's recent files list has been cleared many times and the app has been closed & reopened several times?

THAT IS AN UNACCEPTABLE SECURITY FLAW!

I used EasyFind to search for a filename, and was surprised when that plist file popped up. I opened it with a text editor and was even more surprised to see 3 pages of audio/video files, many of which were opened more than a week ago. And I've rebooted numerous times since then and even cleaned my system caches, logs etc. with two different apps.

I see no reason for this file to exist - it only contains filenames - not settings or anything important. Settings are stored in /Users/xxx/Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc/vlcrc

Please provide a proper bug report with a clear description how you can reproduce the bug. Please start with clean settings (use reset all button in prefs). Before you examine the file in your test, reboot your mac (as the OS is heavily caching the content nowadays), or use the "defaults read" command line tool.

I see no reason for this file to exist - it only contains filenames - not settings or anything important.

This is absolutely wrong, it contains many very important information regarding the mac os user interface. And you would also see them if you would take a proper look at it.

If by "proper look" you mean opening it in a plist editor AND a text editor, that's exactly what I did.
When opened in a plist editor, the file names fall under recentlyPlayedMedia and recentlyPlayedMediaList.



I securely erased it last night, so it's gone now.
I just looked at the new file that was created after rebooting and playing one video last night. It contains the name of that one file even though recent files was cleared.

So again I say, THAT IS A SECURITY RISK!
Anyone looking in that file can see what's been played.

VLC should NOT keep a running record of played files after recent files has been cleared.



There are a few items in the plist for things like window size and whether auto-updates are enabled.
But as I said, most settings are in the vlcrc file.


###
### vlc 2.2.4
###

###
### lines beginning with a '#' character are comments
###

[zvbi] # VBI and Teletext decoder

# Teletext page (integer)
#vbi-page=100

# Teletext transparency (boolean)
#vbi-opaque=0

# Teletext alignment (integer)
#vbi-position=8

# Teletext text subtitles (boolean)
#vbi-text=0

[yuv] # YUV video output

# device, fifo or filename (string)
#yuv-file=stream.yuv

# Chroma used (string)
#yuv-chroma=

# YUV4MPEG2 header (default disabled) (boolean)
#yuv-yuv4mpeg2=0

[x264] # H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10/AVC encoder (x264)

# Maximum GOP size (integer)
#sout-x264-keyint=250

# Minimum GOP size (integer)
#sout-x264-min-keyint=25

# Use recovery points to close GOPs (boolean)
#sout-x264-opengop=0

# Enable compatibility hacks for Blu-ray support (boolean)
#sout-x264-bluray-compat=0

# Extra I-frames aggressivity (integer)
#sout-x264-scenecut=40

# B-frames between I and P (integer)
#sout-x264-bframes=3

# Adaptive B-frame decision (integer)
#sout-x264-b-adapt=1

# Influence (bias) B-frames usage (integer)
#sout-x264-b-bias=0

# Keep some B-frames as references (string)
#sout-x264-bpyramid=normal

# CABAC (boolean)
#sout-x264-cabac=1

# Use fullrange instead of TV colorrange (boolean)
#sout-x264-fullrange=0

# Number of reference frames (integer)
#sout-x264-ref=3

# Skip loop filter (boolean)
#sout-x264-nf=0

# Loop filter AlphaC0 and Beta parameters alpha:beta (string)
#sout-x264-deblock=0:0

# Strength of psychovisual optimization, default is "1.0:0.0" (string)
#sout-x264-psy-rd=1.0:0.0

# Use Psy-optimizations (boolean)
#sout-x264-psy=1

# H.264 level (string)
#sout-x264-level=0

# H.264 profile (string)
#sout-x264-profile=high

Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

If by "proper look" you mean opening it in a plist editor AND a text editor, that's exactly what I did.

So you just proved my point that the file is _not_ completely useless.

You are right, the naming suggests a bit different. But in fact, the entries you found have nothing to do with the recent media list you can find in the main menu. This list (and the clear list menu item) is handled and stored by macOS itself in another place.

What you found are the resume points which are needed for the resume feature to work. So there is no direct connection to the recently played media list in the main menu, and in fact, the entries can be different.

But I agree, it could make sense to clear both the recently played list and all resume points altogether.

I had a similar experience to OP recently... I would prefer to not have history data written to disk when the interface and prefs indicate otherwise. In my case as well the Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc.plist file contained the recent file list that I wanted deleted. I tried removing the file manually... only to have it reappear the next time vlc was run. Turns out OSx is caching preferences (such as the recent file list) at the system level and regenerating the file. (Google "cfprefsd" for more info there...) The fix for me was to also run: then delete the plist file. This removes the entries from the system cache before being rewritten to disk. Hope this helps.

The resume feature was disabled already if recent items were not kept at all.

Starting with VLC 2.2.5 and VLC 3, VLC will delete resume points as well once the user clears the recent items list.