Sponsored channels / recently watched

[PatrickS]

Two questions:

1) How do I permanently remove the "Internet" section with Free Music Charts, Freebox TV, Icecast Radio Directory, Jamendo Selections and Channels.com in the source column? Clicking hide only hides them until the next restart and I can't find a way to edit or delete them. I'm not interested in those channels and seeing them pop up every time starts to feel like an advertisement forced on me.

2) Can I disable VLC's listing of recently watched videos during runtime? I have already deactivated "Keep Recent Items" in Interface->Main Interfaces->macosx, but the playlist still shows all items I've opened since starting the app.


Thanks!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1) you can hide it in 2.0.1.

2) you cannot, as per VLC since 0.8.4

[chelgrian]

1) you can hide it in 2.0.1.

I've just upgraded to 2.0.1 and the behaviour is the same as 2.0.0, that is to say you can hide it but it unhides itself the next time VLC is launched.

[kdean]

I believe he's referring to hiding the whole area (sidebar and playlist) by clicking the playlist button (3 stacked lines) which collapses the controller and sticks through restarts. I find the collapsed controller to be less visually glitchy if I also set the preference to play the video in a separate window.

[fkuehne]

@ chelgrien: regrettably, this is seems to be true. I'll see what I can do about that!

[spektrum]

Searching for a way to remove this unnecessary buttons. Found this thread.

How can remove/edit this?

[Skullriot]

Found this thread, I am looking for the same thing as the above poster. I don't use any of those services and would like the clutter gone.

[spektrum]

Skullriot, it seems no one care about this thread and our questions.

[kdean]

This thread is in the Mac board, but your screen shot is not the Mac version so you should post in the board for the OS you're are using for more direct help.

[channelspamhater]

mods: You might want to move this whole thread to General Troubleshooting. If you do, please remove this line.

The Solution

I know this is an old thread but the problem still exists and this thread is the top result when searching for "VLC remove sponsored channels".

So this is how you do it:
The channels are registered in lua scripts that are stored under VLC's directory. Removing these scripts will disable the channels until you restore the script files. In all cases, this will leave the Podcasts menu item behind but that's a vaguely useful feature rather than spam so you probably don't mind. There are also some associated playlist files but they seem harmless.

In Windows:
Close VLC.
Open File Explorer.
Navigate to: C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\sd
Make a new folder, call it "spam" (renaming the files would probably also work). Move the files that you want removed into this folder, they should be named like the following:

• assembleenationale.luac
  fmc.luac
  freebox.luac
  icecast.luac
  jamendo.luac
  metachannels.luac

Open VLC, they're gone.

On Linux:
brb, rebooting.
The same files exist in Ubuntu under: /usr/lib/vlc/lua/sd
Use something like "sudo mkdir /usr/lib/vlc/lua/sd/spam && sudo mv /usr/lib/vlc/lua/sd/*.luac /usr/lib/vlc/lua/sd/spam", reopen vlc and they're gone.
For other distros, you'll need to find the install location, I suggest using something like "find /usr -name jamendo.luac". I used "sudo apt-file list vlc | grep jamendo.luac" but that will probably only work under Debian derivatives.

On Mac:
You're on your own.

[godzfire]

I'm on a Mac and I do not want this stuff. Developers please tell us how these can be removed.

[dfuhrmann]

You should be able to do the same on Mac. The lua files are found in /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua.

Note through: You are destroying the signature of the application with those actions. Thus it might be possible that some features might behave incorrectly later on.