The VideoLAN Forums

So... I'd like the possibility for VLC to emulate the following behavior from MPC-HC: when you press "next" AND the playlist is empty (or more precisely, only contains one item) open the next media in the current folder. Is this possible? I feel like this is the only thing missing in VLC.

More players already have this feature. Users usually double-click a file in their file manager and associated VLC player appears and starts to play it. There is only one file loaded in VLC playlist. Previous/Next action could replace the current only file in VLC playlist with a previous/next file from the same folder - basic alphabetical order of files in directory! I think that image viewers works the same way (Windows photo viewer, IrfanView, ...). Please file your feature request at https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/

Glad this has been asked for - I don't care about what order (alphabetical etc) just have a forward and back arrow on the side of the player like the media players in windows 10 - just play the next (or previous) file in the folder, however they're sorted in the folder. I shoot a lot of short clips, and like to go thru them quick after putting them on my PC, in Windows 10 I use their native player, but windows 7 I can't. I'd sooner use VLC in any case.

How can this functionality be solicited?
Thanks.

There is not one order to rule them all. Alphabetical order is definitely not what everybody wants, e.g.: 1, 10, 2, 3, 4...

There is not one order to rule them all. Alphabetical order is definitely not what everybody wants, e.g.: 1, 10, 2, 3, 4...

But the alphabetical order is the default one which will satisfy 99% of common needs. (01, 02, .., 10, etc.)
If in the future it will be possible to integrate with the current window (even if it were the search result) it is welcome, but it will only represent the exception that will satisfy the remaining minority.

I believe the way of sorting of a list of files in a folder is the smallest problem preventing implementation of this feature. By the way I have suggested customizable sorting option for users (comment 3 in the opened ticket). Just decide which way would be the default one.

There is not one order to rule them all. Alphabetical order is definitely not what everybody wants, e.g.: 1, 10, 2, 3, 4...

But the alphabetical order is the default one which will satisfy 99% of common needs. (01, 02, .., 10, etc.)

It would be nice if users 0-left-padded their music. But judging from the amount of complaints about VLC sorting directories alphabetically, they don't.

Ok then, the natural sorting order could be the default one. Special characters first: !_#$&@([{+-., ... 012 ... (Aa)(Bb)(Cc) ...
--- EDIT ---
Natural sort order: 1, 2, 10, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_sort_order
So it is the alphabetical order, too. Just multiple digits are treated as one character.

There is not one order to rule them all. Alphabetical order is definitely not what everybody wants, e.g.: 1, 10, 2, 3, 4...

But the alphabetical order is the default one which will satisfy 99% of common needs. (01, 02, .., 10, etc.)

It would be nice if users 0-left-padded their music. But judging from the amount of complaints about VLC sorting directories alphabetically, they don't.

Dude, who cares? Just make it natural sort order and add more options for it in another 8 years. Anything is better than nothing.

Bumping

I don't know why it is insisted that alphabetical/numerical sorting issue is the barrier to implementing this superior QOL change when natural sorting exist. Even a barebones player like MPC-HC has it.

2021. Almost 9 years with this problem and devs still replying with the same pedantic and stupid argument "WhAt OrDeR sHoUlD iT uSe?" "ThErE iS nO nAtUrAl OrDeR".
No one cares if it goes "1 10 2" or "1 2 10", if someone cares about that you could just add an option to change that.
Or just say "We don't care".

No one cares if it goes "1 10 2" or "1 2 10".

You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

And VLC does sort, so if you don't care about the order, why do you even bother ranting here?

No one cares if it goes "1 10 2" or "1 2 10".

You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

And VLC does sort, so if you don't care about the order, why do you even bother ranting here?

Again with the same pedantic answer.
We are not here discusing what sort order VLC should use. Almost a decade asking just a simple feature that almost every other media player has: next/prev button loads the next file in the folder.

What next means is up to you to decide, or even better, put a list of "sort by" options, you have that part done already, right?

For the time i'll be switching again to something with more modern features. I'll be back in 10 years to see if you have implemented this obscure and advanced feature. Probably even click to pause/play will be there! I can't wait to see what kind of super advanced things we will see in the future!

Playing something not in the playlist on pressing next sounds like a bug to me. So yeah, glad that VLC does not implement it.

Sorting order is relevant for the "open folder" function, and VLC does sort that.

Was that hard? A decade to say "We don't want that in our media player, not even as an optional feature"?
Grow up man.

There is a simple method which can be added as optional setting.
When VLC opens file, it opens just a single file.
When VLC opens folder it adds all files from folder and subfolders with alphabetical order, and starts with first file in playlist.

So, simple, logical and easy method:
When user opens Video file with VLC by double-click or right-click play, VLC opens file's folder and forms playlist(no subfolders), finds position of opened file in that playlist and then starts playing that file.

Since playlist will be formed from parent folder of opened file, it will just go to the next 'in folder' when 'next' button is clicked.

It's incredible that this issue isn't prioritized or even acknowledged by VLC. It's the one thing that makes VLC not quite as good as many other media players. If you play a file in a folder, OF COURSE the software should play the next media file automatically. Having to choose a playlist every time... So inferior to your competition. Being able to open a whole folder is not useless, but not good enough for many situations.

I'm grateful that VLC is free, but in this case it means it's dominated by clueless basement dwellers, with no understanding of their users, the mediaplayer market or the real world in general. It's a pity.

The leading developers of VLC may be good programmers, if told what to do by a boss, but I would not invest a cent in any business idea/startup they have.

Hello, friends! I don't know if this is relevant, but I vote for the implementation of this feature.
As a former user of KMP I can assure you that having an ability to double-click open just one file in a folder and by that getting a full contents of the folder in a playlist is close to essential. It's really, really convenient in everyday use. And not having this killer feature is a real pain.
I switched from Windows to macOS several years ago and since then I have been using VLC because in my opinion it is the only noteworthy mediaplayer available on macOS. It has almost everything an average user could need. Everything except for a small but valuable feature as the one discussed in this thread.
I'm pretty sure that if VLC had this feature, it would have a big impact on popularity among users, especially macOS users, because there is no real competition in the terms of usability and functions available.
Please consider adding this great feature to your truly magnificent application.