The VideoLAN Forums

Posted: **02 Sep 2010 22:26**

Ever since I installed the newest version of VLC it began to display album covers whenever I play an audio file. This wouldn't bother me so much if it didn't make the player's window so large. I've looked through preferences and the various menus but I can't make it go away. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

Posted: **03 Sep 2010 01:58**

You can change the album art download policy in the preferences. Go to:
Tools >> Preferences

And in the "Interface" section scroll down to "Privacy / Network interaction" and you can change the "Album art download policy" to e.g. "Manual download only". This should stop VLC downloading album art when a track starts playing.

Files which already have album art downloaded might still display the art, so delete the files from VLC's cache, which should be found in %appdata%\vlc\art.

Cheers, Arite.

Posted: **03 Sep 2010 13:25**

Arite, thank you very much for your reply. I already did what you instructed but it still displays the VLC logo (the orange traffic cone). Is there any way to revert it back to a simple bar with no visual element?

Thanks in advance!

Posted: **03 Sep 2010 15:36**

which logo is anoying you ? The one in the playlist ? One in the place where the video usually is ?

Posted: **03 Sep 2010 16:32**

which logo is anoying you ? The one in the playlist ? One in the place where the video usually is ?

It's not the logo that bothers me - it's the fact that it is displayed at all. I play any .mp3 file and it plays it but it also displays the video screen. Except there's no video to play, so I'm stuck with this large player window with the orange cone in it instead of just the slender little rectangle with the buttons.

Posted: **03 Sep 2010 16:43**

If I'm not doing a mistake on which icon you want to hide, just resize the windows size ant the icon will desapear. But if your are talking about the icon in the playlist, that's not possible to remove it.

Posted: **03 Sep 2010 16:44**

If I'm not doing a mistake on which icon you want to hide, just resize the windows size ant the icon will desapear. But if your are talking about the icon in the playlist, that's not possible to remove it.

Oh... resizing worked! Wow, is my face red right now.

Thanks for the help!

Posted: **07 Sep 2010 22:11**

You'r welcome.

Posted: **08 Apr 2011 19:43**

ivoire wrote:

If I'm not doing a mistake on which icon you want to hide, just resize the windows size ant the icon will desapear. But if your are talking about the icon in the playlist, that's not possible to remove it.

Thanks, ivoire, for solving a little problem that's been annoying me for a while, too.

Posted: **04 Aug 2012 01:37**

Hello to All,

Sorry to be quite late to find a solution to this problem but for future readers.

---To avoid displaying any icon when a song is run:
Tools, Preferences, Show settings with select All, Interface, Main interface, Qt, unselect "Display background cone or art".

Me, I kept the VLC icon appearing but I got rid of the downloaded icons for the song played following the suggestion given in this posting because, most of the time, it simply shows a wrong icon for the particular song played.

Best Regards to All

Posted: **13 Feb 2013 19:04**

To me Album Art in VLC is a nag and it is also a nag that after an upgrade the setting for album art downloading reverts to the default.
As the album art gets stored in %appdata%\vlc\art as described in Arite's answer above I went to that folder, deleted it and created a simple file with the name art.
I suppose that it will create an internal error in VLC as it cannot create a folder with the same name and cache anything there but so far I don't have problems playing my files.
Now at least for the running revision the art update is inhibited and I have high hopes that during an update the %appdata%\vlc folder is not recreated and the art download will be gone for good.

Posted: **16 May 2015 17:36**

Hello,

I am using VLC media player 2.2.1 on windows and I wanted to find a way to stop VLC to overwrite my own chosen album images. Arite wrote earlier in this forum about how to disable it in "Tools >> Preferences >> Prifacy / Network Interaction" but I can't seem to find that option in my VLC. Can someone please help me?

JustTimoCraft.

PS: I named the map and the images as VLC did it himself. For 294 Of my songs it worked just fine, or it was my mistake that I solved later. But on 6 of those songs it keeps overwriting my own HD pictures with a part of a lirics video. (just as a picture. There are 2 pictures in that map. But if I remove it, it keeps downloading the same image.)

Posted: **16 Apr 2017 17:30**

You can change the album art download policy in the preferences. Go to:
Tools >> Preferences

And in the "Interface" section scroll down to "Privacy / Network interaction" and you can change the "Album art download policy" to e.g. "Manual download only". This should stop VLC downloading album art when a track starts playing.

Files which already have album art downloaded might still display the art, so delete the files from VLC's cache, which should be found in %appdata%\vlc\art.

Cheers, Arite.

This method is no longer available anywhere I can find. There is nothing displayed under the "Simple" settings and the "All" settings I've not been able to find a setting regarding the album art at all.

I some albums by family members where it is pulling up bogus album art and want to stop it from doing this.

Posted: **01 Jul 2017 16:14**

The art cover search is performed by LUA plugins, but it seems you can't disable any lua plugins, except by removing them

.

I've done it on a Linux system, but it should work on Windows also. Look for the lua/meta directory where you can find similar files:

lua/meta/art/01_googleimage.luac
lua/meta/art/03_lastfm.luac
lua/meta/art/02_frenchtv.luac
lua/meta/art/00_musicbrainz.luac
lua/meta/fetcher/tvrage.luac
lua/meta/reader/filename.luac

Simply rename the "meta" directory to something like "meta.hide". If VLC was running, restart it.

Posted: **06 Aug 2017 01:54**

I solved this by reinstalling VLC and resetting the settings. When you start it the first time it asks you if you want to allow metadata stuff from the internet, just uncheck that and save. It didn't download some crappy youtube thumbnail as the cover art for my mp3 the next time I used it.

Posted: **21 Oct 2017 18:16**

To me Album Art in VLC is a nag and it is also a nag that after an upgrade the setting for album art downloading reverts to the default.
As the album art gets stored in %appdata%\vlc\art as described in Arite's answer above I went to that folder, deleted it and created a simple file with the name art.
I suppose that it will create an internal error in VLC as it cannot create a folder with the same name and cache anything there but so far I don't have problems playing my files.
Now at least for the running revision the art update is inhibited and I have high hopes that during an update the %appdata%\vlc folder is not recreated and the art download will be gone for good.

I too am having this issue. I have some audio files that I have been messing with, adding custom MetaData and cover art, but every time I refresh it reverts to some other cover art I didn't add! Is it that VLC is downloading the first image referenced by the MetaData? (At least the image is relevent, but not what I wanted! I guess I entered all that MetaData correctly!)

Posted: **07 Feb 2019 15:59**

I just discovered it by hasard when writing cvlc command line script :

# playing a sound with cvlc, then sig interrupt it in an unexpected way (CTRL+C)

cvlc mysound.mp3
VLC media player 3.0.6 Vetinari (revision 3.0.6-0-g5803e85f73)
[000055fa28a1ab60] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module...
^C[00007f8c8c00c1b0] access stream error: HTTP connection failure
[00007f8c8c00c1b0] main stream error: connection failed: Network is unreachable
[00007f8c8c00c1b0] http stream error: cannot connect to www.google.com:80
[00007f8c8c000980] main art finder error: no suitable access module for `http://images.google.com/images?q=Bizzy_Kiddo%20Half-Life%20alarm%20%28Extended%29%20cover'

Guessing that it makes by default Google Image request for each read file, and observing the name of the file without any clue (mysound.mp3), I think a hidden parsing of the audio stream is necessary to know my file is actually an extract of the alarm sound in Half Life 1 game.

I unchecked this option in interface preferences, but why this option is activated by default ?

I specify that my /etc/apt/source.list does not contain any non-free or contrib instruction
shame on U vlc maintainers.

Posted: **27 Jan 2020 08:35**

To prevent album art cache (and prevent it altogether) I posted a workaround on this thread:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=127077
and I will quote it below:

A workaround is to change the permissions of the art folder. I did this in Windows 10. It might apply to other versions as well.

Go to the "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\vlc" folder.

On the "art" folder only: right click -> properties -> security tab -> Edit -> check every single "Deny" box for each group and username listed. Do not press Apply until every box is checked. Press Apply once all Deny boxes are checked. Press OK on the confirmation box and that should solve it.

Note: this will prevent album art from appearing in vlc at all.

***Be careful when changing folder permissions. Be sure to only edit permissions on that specific folder, the 'art' folder.

***If you want to delete the contents of the art cache, do so before applying the deny permissions as you will not be able to enter the folder once applied.

***If you need to re-gain access to the folder, or want album art back in vlc, remove the check marks from every Deny box but don't hit Apply until every single box is un-checked.

Hope this helps.

Posted: **13 Nov 2023 20:06**

Does changing folder permissions create a 'loop' as vlc tries to save to drive but can't so vlc tries again?

Posted: **16 Nov 2023 14:47**

Hello,

I have a similar problem with Art for videos. If I use the playlist, I see only some videos displayed with thumbnails. Others have simply the VLC-logo on it. So it is no fun, choosing from that list "by picture".

VLC seems to always get the custom metaData from the .avi and creates from that an own thumbnail in ...AppData\Roaming\vlc\art\arturl. Those should be the thumbnails I see in the playlist.
When no custom metaData is there, there is no thumbnail created in .../arturl then and VLC uses the VLC-logo as thumb.
It didn`t download metaData from the internet, either.
However, VLC obviously does not create an own screenshot to be able to display a "real" thumbnail.

Is it right, that the VLCPlayer does not make screenshots for the thumbnails in .../arturl automatically?
Can I somehow activate such an option?
Or can I only make those screenshots manually an add them manually?

Thanks in advance and greetings!
Chris

Posted: **21 Nov 2023 15:39**

The only time I get art is with some mp3's. I delete them with https://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

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Disabling Album Art on VLC

Disabling Album Art on VLC

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There is a way to get rid completely of the icon appearing.

Re: Disabling Album Art on VLC

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