VLC displaying wrong album art

[Vitalize4656]

Please fix this issue, album art displays incorrectly in VLC (both for PC and Android), it happen when the songs have same title (but difference artist, album), for example:

[*] File: 001.ogg, Title: One, Artist: AA
[*] File: 002.ogg, Title: One, Artist: BB
[*] File: 003.ogg, Title: One, Artist: CC
[*] ...

In VLC, the app will only use the album art of the first song in the playlist for all songs with the same title, I think due to a caching issue.

[lost un]

Yes, this is an important feature request, to disable caching. At last I allowed updating my old version of VLC to 3.0.19, and found that, first off, when it started, it really hogged the processor, and afterwards I found that it had copied every picture from our extensiv Media Library (all sound) into its cache. Of course, I deleted the whole tree beginning at art. I had recourse to a device mentioned in another troubleshooting post, making an art with no directory access, but then, as stated in that post, VLC shows no album-art at all.
Seems to me that the developers set up the pictures to come only from the cache; if not there, an on-line picture is found for storing in the cache, unless the user forbids that, and only at last is a picture found in the loaded sound-file s metadata. For my use, and many others s, too, it seems to me, that is so wrong. We want the picture from the sound-file, and from no other source, with no cache to fill the disk up with.
I uninstalled 3.0.19, and reverted to the old 2.2.3, and will, as I have been doing, regularly delete the to me useless cache. And I want to see the pictures.

[cringus1066]

So here it is 2024. I'm having this same issue with wrong album art being shown. Since the suggestions here are outdated what is the fix current day? I tried some of the old suggestions but with updates/upgrades to the software I haven't been able to follow the navigation suggestion back in 2016, etc.

[perzaklie]

Yep, here it is 2024 and it is still happening! Same exact album art as way back in the beginning. I have since built and installed a new PC, re-installed VLC as a fresh install, and the exact same album art shows up! I'm beginning to wonder if it is not hard coded in VLC?!?!?!

[mmortal03]

The first thing to do is to uncheck "Allow metadata network access" under:
Simple preferences -> Interface -> Privacy / Network interaction
or
Advanced preferences -> Playlist

The second thing to do is to go to Folder Options -> View -> Advanced Settings:
check "Show hidden files"
*and*
uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" (Many people don't realize they need to do this one)

Then look for any jpg files such as Folder.jpg *and* Albumartsmall.jpg (and possibly other Albumart*.jpg files) that are stored in the same directory as what you're playing back from, and move those somewhere else or delete them.

The third thing to do is to delete the folders inside %appdata%/VLC/art/

If you've done all of that, then it's probably a bug, similar to this: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/18519

[perzaklie]

Did all that, still have that stray album art popping up inconsistently. I can live with it. I was just hoping someone somewhere had found the solution. That bug link you gave makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

[mmortal03]

Did all that, still have that stray album art popping up inconsistently. I can live with it. I was just hoping someone somewhere had found the solution. That bug link you gave makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

Just edited what I wrote to add one additional thing before looking for those jpg files:
In Windows, make sure to go to Folder Options -> View -> Advanced Settings:
check "Show hidden files"
*and*
uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" (Many people don't realize they need to do this one)

[burt8810]

CRINGUS1066

Are you saying this method no longer works?
Thanks

Finally, I have found the solution to fix this on Windows.

Step 1) Make a batch file. Put it in any folder you want (I put it in the Documents folder). After you created a batch file, open it in Notepad (right-click the batch file and select Edit), and type:

@echo off
cd %AppData%\vlc
rmdir art /s /q
exit

Step 2) [Optional] Convert it to an EXE file. Use a batch to exe converter to convert the batch file to an exe. This is optional, but if you want to hide the console window, this can be useful.

Step 3) Enable 'application start' logging. To do this, open Run box (by pressing Win+R), type secpol.msc, click OK. This will open up Local Security Policy. Navigate to Local Policies/Audit Policy, and then double-click Audit Process Tracking. Tick the "Success" box, and then click OK. Now you can close Local Security Policy.

Step 4) Create a task to automatically run batch file after VLC closes. To do this, open Run box again (by pressing Win+R), type taskschd.msc, click OK. This will open up Task Scheduler. Click "Create task..." on the right corner. Give it a name. And then, go to Triggers tab, and then create a new trigger. Make sure to choose "On an event" as the trigger. After that, choose Custom, and then add an event trigger. Change the Filter settings like this:

Choose "By log"
Event logs: Security
Task category: Process Creation
Keywords: Audit Success
Box that will appear that is on top of "Task category": 4689

After changing the settings, go to XML tab, enable "Edit query manually". Click OK if any warning boxes appear. Change the XML to this:

<QueryList>
<Query Id="0" Path="Security">
<Select Path="Security">
*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing'] and Task = 13313 and (band(Keywords,9007199254740992)) and (EventID=4689)]]
and
*[EventData[Data[@Name='ProcessName'] and (Data='C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe')]]
</Select>
</Query>
</QueryList>

Click OK, and then click OK again. Now go to Action tab, and then create a new action. Action should be "Start a Program", and then click "Browse", and choose batch file that you made in step 1. After that, click OK, click OK again. Now you can close Task Scheduler.

Step 5) Test it! Now, the problem should be fixed. But the batch file will run with 1 second delay, so you should wait about 1 or 2 second(s) after closing VLC.