The VideoLAN Forums

Currently, if VLC is already open in the background, it will just stay there when new files are opened via double-clicking or pressing enter on a selected file with VLC as default player, or via the context (right-click) menu: 'Open' or 'Play with VLC media player.

Any other media player, or actually any other application of which a related file is opened, would simply pop back up. VLC, however, just stays in the background and at most blinks or throws a notification about that a new file has been opened. For a player that opens and plays files as fast as it does, this particular behavior really slows things down a lot.

I assumed 'Auto raising the interface: Audio/Video' would include this behavior, but it doesn't. Perhaps it is broken. I'm on version 3.0.10 on Windows 10.

Is there any way to make VLC pop up to the top automatically when it has received any new input?

Same problem here. Just use MPC-HC.

Reset prefs and try again afterwards: https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:ResetPrefs

Reset prefs and try again afterwards: https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:ResetPrefs

Didn't work Time to go back to MPC.

Reset prefs and try again afterwards: https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:ResetPrefs

Didn't work Time to go back to MPC.

You can force vlc to always be on top via the View menu if that's what you want to do.

Reset prefs and try again afterwards: https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:ResetPrefs

Didn't work Time to go back to MPC.

You can force vlc to always be on top via the View menu if that's what you want to do.

No, I want it to pop up when I click on a file, not stay in my face all the time

I can't believe such a simple normal Windows capability was left out of vlc. Big oversight

Here's a workaround

Here's a workaround

This works (after a reboot). Thanks for sharing! However, it unfortunately is an incomplete hack. It does nothing whenever...

... a playlist is playing with 'Enqueue items into playlist' selected;

... 'Only one instance' is selected with 'Enqueue items into playlist' not selected.

In either case it keeps VLC in the back and never focuses on it. Which is definitely a VLC issue more so than a Windows one.

With any other application able to do it just fine without registry changes, surely it's something that can be programmed inside the application itself.

With any other application able to do it just fine without registry changes, surely it's something that can be programmed inside the application itself.

Unlikely to happen: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 42#p496942

Unlikely to happen: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 42#p496942

Perhaps at least the focus could be put onto VLC into the described instances. Given that is not Windows-specific and is expected behavior on all platforms. Then the registry hack would work and not be incomplete.

Hi,

This is not Windows only. Every computer I have, with even different video boars (all of them Ubuntu 20.04) have this very super annoying problem that seems to live long. And at least in my case, happens very random. Sometimes it does open files just fine, others does not (because VLC is running on background).

Now the problem is that when you close a file (and I think only happens with videos) that vlc stays in background and does not close properly.

Resetting preferences is a waste of time because It happens again later.

So, is there any REAL fix fort this more that migrate to another multimedia player?

Thanks.

You can kill the vlc task by running taskkill /im vlc.exe from a command prompt.

SOLVED (at least for me!)
VLC runs in background...App opens but plays in background screen.
My fix: "Interface" then Preferences, then VIDEO, then UNTICK fullscreen play then SAVE.