The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,
I have been using VLCPortable from portableapps.com for many years now. Recently though I have been having a major lag in starting a video, around 5-10 minutes!
After looking into it, I found that the version downloaded by SyMenu is the official one. I assumed the PA.com one used the official but according to this site, that's not the case.

However, I am only interested in fully portable applications, regardless of the hassle involved in maintenance or use.

Although I do only use portable applications, they are on an internal fast HDD. I just wish to keep my system clean as possible for music production.

I have searched this site for info on making the official VLC app settings portable, but it seems it's not possible or not likely to ever have this option added.
Could someone please confirm this. Thank you.

Just to clarify what I'm after...
1. Settings saved to app dir.
2. Nothing left in system folders or registry.
3. VLC is set as default video only app for all .ext types I use.
4. No shortcuts or cmd prompts are likely to work unless they work when called via a file manager by directly opening a video file.

Thanks for your help and amazing job you've done here, always been my fave app for video, thank you.

Download VLC 3.0.0 nightly build, the ZIP or 7Zip file.
Extract it to the folder of your choice, then create a folder named "portable" (without quotes) where VLC.exe is.
Done.

Thank you so much for your reply, I will give that a try. Thank you again
And thanks to the developers for adding this function

I've just popped back here to give a quick reply and to give thanks again.
That was exactly what I was looking for

I've been trying out the latest nightly builds, but each seems to have the same issue, they keep using all 16GB RAM then crashing!
Does anyone else have this problem?

I hope that this can be fixed soon, as I'm having the delay issue mentioned in my first post still.
Here's hoping...

I've been trying out the latest nightly builds, but each seems to have the same issue, they keep using all 16GB RAM then crashing!
Does anyone else have this problem?

I hope that this can be fixed soon, as I'm having the delay issue mentioned in my first post still.
Here's hoping...

Fixed.

Sorry for the late reply!
Thank you for fixing

Hello,

I stopped using VLC media player at version 2.2.3 but now I see there is a way to run it in portable mode so I am coming back. For me portable mode is the best feature ever implemented- no more annoying installers (I remember once I had to install it twice because I failed to notice checked by default Windows shell integration), no more writing to Windows registry and to AppData, no more terrible third-party portable versions (PortableApps and others), all data and settings in one place- thanks to the developer(s) who implemented portable mode!

I wanted to test it but unfortunately I could not find the win64 builds- were they deleted? Some external sites were referring to these builds but the download links are gone now. What has happened?

Regards

I visited the IRC channel and I got help and response from a very helpful user, thresh, who answered my question about the win64 builds.

I visited the IRC channel and I got help and response from a very helpful user, thresh, who answered my question about the win64 builds.

.
And what was thresh's answer?

Use 'portable' folder.

I just registered to say thanks for this. I couldn't see this in the FAQs or anywhere in the help. It just points to the portable apps website.

Maybe someone could update the FAQs' for this.


Here's the wiki where it's pointing to PA website:
https://wiki.videolan.org/Windows/#Portable_VLC

I just registered to say thanks for this. I couldn't see this in the FAQs or anywhere in the help. It just points to the portable apps website.

Maybe someone could update the FAQs' for this.


Here's the wiki where it's pointing to PA website:
https://wiki.videolan.org/Windows/#Portable_VLC

How are the detailed steps of solution?
I follow the solution from "Lotesdelere" and "Jean-Baptiste Kempf" but still fails.
I'm not sure if I did something wrong.

Here are my steps:
I extract the zip to somewhere
> inside the extracted folder, I created a sub-folder named "portable"
> I move vlc.exe and also its dependencies: "libvlc.dll", "libvlccore.dll" and a sub-folder "plugins" into the "portable" sub-folder
> the app can successfully run as usual BUT no config files is generated inside any part of the extracted folder

PS:
the config files are still created inside AppData folder.

Also I don't know whether it is because I had used another vlc portable instance before reading this post.

the 1st time I used vlc without creating "portable" folder since not yet read this post
So may be any registry regarding the path of config files (ie AppData folder) are already written to system
therefore even I download are run another vlc instance with creating "portable" folder, vlc.exe still follow the registry to go to AppData to read config file

I found out about creating the "portable" subfolder on the PortableFreeware Web site - the information on "How to extract".
https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=599
It's my favorite site for Portable versions.
Only the config files should be in the "portable" subfolder.
The contents of mine are "crashdump", "lua", and "vlc" folders along with the files "ml.xspf" and "vlcrc".

No need to use a third party build, VLC can be portable on its own.

> I move vlc.exe and also its dependencies: "libvlc.dll", "libvlccore.dll" and a sub-folder "plugins" into the "portable" sub-folder

Wrong, don't move the program into the Portable folder.
Here is how to do it:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=160467