The VideoLAN Forums

Hello, can there be a better way VLC uses to manage playlists? I have all my music stored on a Dropbox folder on my computer, and I use VLC for Windows to create playlists. And then I copy all the songs, including the playlists I created to my Android device. But when i try to open in the VLC app it's telling me the files are not found. Trying to open the m3u file with notepad, I have to manually change the directories for each song to match the filesystem for Android. Every time I add or change a song I have to do this and it's not so convenient, especially if I have to manage a lot of files. If I create or modify a playlist on Windows , I expect it to work on Windows. If I copy that same file to Android without making any changes, I expect it to work on Android also. So can the developers of VLC implement a better solution for this?

VLC 3.0 will export m3u playlists with non-absolute path.

Has there been any update on this request?

Have you tried with latest VLC 3.0.0 nightly build ?

Still having the same problem

I found this under Example 3:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U#Examples

The latest version of VLC is still having the same issue.

How do I get VLC to export a playlist with relative paths? I open the files in VLC, arrange them in the order I want and then select Media | Save Playlist to File. I can select a folder and file name for the playlist, but there is no option to choose between absolute paths and relative paths. I am using VLC V3.0.4 Vetinari.

VLC is still having the same issue..

Save the playing in the same directory or a parent directory of the files. That's the heuristic to pick relative or absolute paths.

No, a playlist saved to the same directory as the songs will have absolute path names. Windows 10. V3.0.6 VLC media player.
e.g.
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:192,Moody Blues, The - Go Now
file:///G:/media/music6_1164songs/Moody_Blues__The_-_The_Best_Of_The_Moody_Blues_(1996)_MP3/01%20-%20Go%20Now.mp3

Now, it is true that if you save it to the parent directory, then the paths will be relative to that directory. Which is a step in the right direction. But then the paths will have the directory name in them and if you change the directoryname, then the playlist will not work. This was an odd way to attempt to address this request for feature.

Any updates?

Works fine here as of 3.0.0.

I am still getting the absolute path under 3.0.6

I am having the same issue as bikewave55 on VLC 3.0.7 Vetinari.
I saved an .m3u playlist on Desktop and the path is absolute.

Paths are saved as absolute, except for the paths of the files in the directory the playlist was placed on. If you manually edit the m3u and remove the absolute filepaths leading to the filename, VLC will Not reproduce the playlist, not even the files in the directory of the m3u that were being played prior to editing. Calling this "relative path support" is ridiculous even if partially true.