The VideoLAN Forums

Posted: **09 Dec 2022 12:23**

I am running the latest version of the following packages
- arch linux 6.0.10-arch2-1 #1
- bash 5.1.16(1)-release
- VLC media player 3.0.17.4 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2)

How do I toggle full screen from the command line when vlc already running?

One idea is to use playerctl as follows, but apparentley is has no full-screen command?

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playerctl --player=vlc full-screen

Another is to is to use something like this

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dbus-send --print-reply --session --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set string:org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player string:Volume variant:double:1.0

... ??? although that is obviously for doing something with the volume

as described here https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... with-qdbus

But how that works is not obvious to me either and I don't know the structure of how dbus works and the pay off for learning this for one command seems hardly worth it.

Anyone know if dbus will support full screen toggle?

Posted: **09 Dec 2022 12:29**

does not look like the dbus-send will support full screen toggle, if available commands listed here are correct
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ ... rface.html

Posted: **10 Dec 2022 18:08**

Don't know why I did not think of these solutions earlier.

Two solutions available. I prefer the first

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# use xdtool to send an f for fullscreen to the application using the application ID 
xdotool windowactivate --sync "$(xdotool search --class VLC | head -1)" key f

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# use the built-in function on wmctrl to toggle fullscreen
# the below code is used in a keybinding to bring the open minimised VLC media player to focus and make it full screen
bash -c '
  wmctrl -R "VLC media player";
  sleep 0.25;
  wmctrl -i -a $(wmctrl -l | grep VLC | grep -oE "^[0-9a-zA-Z]{1,10}" | head -n 1) -b toggle,fullscreen
'

The first one is better for my purpose.

If you are on windows or apple I have no idea if these utilities area available to you or how you would solve this problem.

Posted: **10 Dec 2022 18:12**

wmctrl is way more advisable than injecting keys which may have different effect depending on context.

With that said, most programmatic scenarii would just set fullscreen before starting not after

Posted: **10 Dec 2022 19:14**

My purpose is to use a keybinding to bring the open minimised VLC media player to focus and make it full screen.

This is repeated often and will be used very many times across hours of numerous videos, hence the need for the keybinding.

Turns out that the small script for wmctrl I have above works out best.

What it does is as follows
- it brings the media player to focus,
- then small time gap just to make sure nothing messes up,
- then toggles to full screen

That's it

The VideoLAN Forums

how to toggle full screen from the command line when vlc is already running

how to toggle full screen from the command line when vlc is already running

Re: how to toggle full screen from the command line when vlc is already running

SOLUTION: how to toggle full screen from the command line when vlc is already running

Re: how to toggle full screen from the command line when vlc is already running

Re: how to toggle full screen from the command line when vlc is already running