Play all media files in a folder in order WITHOUT playlist or dumping (Windows/Android).

[Ahearn Irving]

VLC is great, no question. That is undisputable. But it has a very serious flaw. I've come back again and again periodically to this forum over the years to see if this problem has been fixed but, so far that I can see, no proper solution!

To describe the issue, I'll give the example of my media player machine hooked up to my TV. I put a USB flash drive in it with movies of all different formats, and, like VLC, it'll play anything thrown at it (AVI, MKV, MP4, MP3s, JPGs, etc., etc.). I'll switch and changes movies on the USB stick several times a week and never have to fuss with the media player. Plug the stick into it and start at the file of choice and it'll play continuously from THAT POINT FORWARD in the folder and IN SEQUENCE without touching the remote control again (AND it remembers the last play point on each file so if you stop it, next time it'll prompt to restart from beginning or resume from last point!!). So the media player starts from the file you choose in that folder and plays continuously in sequence, all with ONE push of a PLAY button! So if I press that special continous PLAY button, it'll play the files IN SEQUENCE in THAT FOLDER, from that file on - but, get this, I do have the choice of playing one file if I just press another button, the OK one! I never use the OK button and always use the PLAY button, but one does get a choice!

Not so VLC! Only ONE file at a time and you have to keep choosing the next file. And equally annoying that on both VLC for Windows and VLC Android, I can't seem to find where to set the starting home directory. And when we go to play files, it lumps and brings up ALL media files in ALL folders into it. Gahhh!!! We need a starting directory that VLC will stick to on the Android phone!!! If I need to play media files outside that folder, I should have choice to still set home directory but should be able to navigate to another folder and press play and it'll play from THAT folder only and in sequence, too!!!! (I have manuals and stuff in other folders but want VLC's home directory to be the movies and TV episodes folder!)

This has become such a serious annoyance that even after years of mostly quite-satisfied use of VLC, I'm very, very ready to jump ship to any other software media player that handles many file formats like VLC does in a portable manner but with this much-needed behaviour! I've lived with this annoyance more or less (less actually) on my Windows app but it's just beyond acceptable on the Nexus where fast and efficient operation can't be compromised on.

No, we don't want to create playlists for every darn single folder and, no, we don't want to have to navigate all the time to a folder to open all media where VLC will dump every single darn file into it even if it's a format it can't play like PDFs, text files, Word files, etc., etc. (via MEDIA > OPEN FOLDER ...). That's the only advice ever given here, so far, that I've seen. All unacceptable.

What's needed is to be able to click on a file and it'll play all MEDIA files in the folder from that point forward and in sequence of filename. If my new media player hooked up to my TV has been doing that for several months and the old one that only played AVIs did so for 5 years and it was a cheap old thing from Walmart unlike my new one, then something as advanced as VLC has always been should do this as well. And it should just be built-in with no fuss or muss!!!!!!!!!!!!

So if anyone knows if there's a way to do this WITHOUT doing a playlist or having to navigate to a folder, that would be great. I don't mind at all downloading a new version, either, for both PC and Android. Equally seriously annoying on my Nexus that _all_ media files get picked up, to begin with, and then I have to move back to the folder and choose the next file to play after every single media file. And, no, creating a playlist on dynamic folders (that change constantly) is NOT the answer! Nor having to navigate to the folder in question esp. since both OSs VLC don't seem to have an option to set the starting home directory either, isn't an answer - both being the only solutions I've seen come up in this forum every time I've looked here.

Thanks for any constructive tips! I had to copy about a hundred short how-to vids from PC to my media player that I must hunt through for research purposes since neither home PC VLC nor Android VLC will handle continuously in sequence properly. I have to reached frustration threshold today, that's for sure <sigh>!

Cheers,

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

In VLC, just open the folder , and it will play, all of them.

[ej.exe]

In VLC, just open the folder , and it will play, all of them.

Was that supposed to be a joke? I have read through dozens of threads with people asking for this incredibly SIMPLE feature! The only "solution" anyone ever gives is to "Open Folder". Oh yeah, somewhere else suggested the "AddSimilar" extension. That isn't what is being asked for!

If I "Open Folder" and there are subfolders inside it, it digs through all of them and pulls out all of the files. So then I have to View > Playlist and figure out what files are the ones I want, remove them all, and then apparently I have to sort the files afterwards because they appear to be added to the playlist at random....?

This feature would be incredibly easy to implement, it would be just ONE function in Visual Basic, Javascript, PHP, etc (those are the languages I use most often). It would first figure out what file was playing, and I assume that would already be stored in a variable in RAM somewhere. Then it would see what the next file in the directory is (going alphabetically.... could probably utilize an array of filenames here). And then it would play it. And when that file finished playing, it repeats!

I don't understand why everyone always suggests a workaround, it would take MAYBE 10 minutes to type the code up. Why should I have to spend a few minutes setting up the playlist every single time I decide to open the folder?

MPC (Media Player Classic) has an option for "After Playback"; you can choose to just stop playing at the end (like VLC does when you play a single file), to exit, or to just play the next file in the folder. I watch a lot of videos with multiple parts, and I got VLC because I can speed videos up without changing pitch. MPC can't do this, and in fact it is an issue that gets a lot of excuses instead of solutions as well. Its lame, why can't I just have both features on one player? Why do the developers flat out ignore these things that are asked for over and over again?

I will literally delete EVERY media player I have the day I find a player with both of these features and developers who are actively making their app do all the things that the users want (within reason..... like this super easy thing that keeps getting swept under the rug).

[Love Music]

I have not tried it yet but did see the option in Tools/Prefs/All(bottom button)/Playlist/Play files randomly. Let me know if it works.

[Love Music]

In Windows:
I have not tried it but did see the option in Tools/Prefs/All(bottom button)/Playlist/Play files randomly. Let me know if it works.

[Benjobobby]

To the OP: you've clearly articulated my concerns and frustration with this behavior. I keep a ton of live music on my Android device, and frequenly shuttle content on and off of it. I just want a simple way to select a directory and have VLC play all the content sequentially. No-go. Really quite frustrated. I'm now looking for alternatives, which is really too bad...-Ben

[cbnorwood]

[SOLVED] Make sure that you have the toggle for LOOP ALL selected in the VLC playback controls section selected in order to have VLC play back the entire folder contents. Select the RANDOM toggle to circumvent alphabetized playback or one of the other ordination options on that toggle to suit preference.

[underdaawg]

@cbnorwood That only works if the playlist has all that files enqueues. On simply navigating to a folder opening it doesn't enqueue other files, so this solution doesn't solve the problem.
Still in hunt for a solution for both Windows and Android versions.

[edtek22]

I think this might answer part of your post. To play all vids in a folder:
Android:
start VLC,
in my LG K10 it then opens to directories
select folder with vids you want to play
press 3 dots next to 1st vid and select Play all
That's it! All vids play
PC:
start VLC,
select media/open folder
navigate to folder with vids you want to play
press select folder
That's it! All vids play

[th3jm4n]

I really wish people would stop misunderstanding this issue. The default "Movies & TV" application in Windows is inferior to VLC in every way, except this one:
If I open an episode of a TV show inside a folder on my computer, at any location inside the folder, Movies & TV will allow me to navigate forward and backward through the files in that folder WITHOUT HAVING TO ADD THE ENTIRE FOLDER TO A PLAYLIST.
If I'm halfway through a 7 season show that has all of the episodes in one folder, I don't want to add the entire folder to the playlist to watch a show in the middle of season 5, but it WOULD be nice if I could open an episode thereabouts, and have it continue to play on through the folder.
OPENING THE ENTIRE FOLDER IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM.

Also, who tags their own posts "[Solved]"? Jesus.

[blanca1086]

ROFL!!! I registered just so I could tell you how people don't bother to read or can't comprehend simple questions. I know exactly what you are saying on mac there is Mplayer(Movies & TV Alternative) that has the same function like you described and I wish VLC would adopt this function because VLC is superior in every way except this one.

(For Those that can't seem to grasp the concept):

In the OP's instance it would be ex;

The Office Season 1-9
episodes are named in format

The Office (US) - 6x24 - The Cover-Up
The Office (US) - 6x25 - The Chump
The Office (US) - 6x26 - Whistleblower
The Office (US) - 7x01 - Nepotism

I am resuming from episode 24 Season 6, it will continue to play the next episode even into season 7. wait i need to go to 22 because I forgot Michael told Erin about Andy and Angela hit the [<] button 6 times i'm on episode 22, finish watching so back to episode 1 season 7 hit the [>] until on episode 1.
During playback I can Skip to next episode with [>] key and previous with [<} I can do this WITHOUT ever making a PLAYLIST. IN FACT THE ONLY TIME I USE MY MOUSE/TRACKPAD WAS OPENING THE VIDEO(i Didn't even need it for that).
This function is infinitely better than the Playlist option, and to those who have never experienced it you might think we are being lazy or iffy, but once you go playlist-less everything else is just a mess.


THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF MULTIPLE TYPES IN ONE FOLDER.

I have a folder, called "Standup Comedians" For Some reason or another I did not want to segregate the folder in to subfolders for each individual comedian(idk why someone would but... hey)
Inside the folder is;
Chris Rock
Louis CK
Dave Chapelle
Kevin Hart
Ricky Gervais
Flight of the Concords
many others.

They are all named sequentially such as, Chris Rock 1, Chris Rock 2, Kevin Hart1, Kevin Hart2 and so on.
on MPlayer I would just double click Flight of the Concords 1 and it will play, lets assume that there are 5 other flight of concords named sequentially. Whenever it finishes FOC1(Flight of the Concords 1), it will automatically open FOC2 and so on without opening any other comedians. Since I'm in a singing comedy mood I would not want Louis CK vulgar profanity to disrupt this and since it plays the basename it will only play Flight of the Concords.
This can be used for music in case I have a folder with 700 songs but wanna listen to classical while studying, since i've named all files based on genre first it will skip from classical to classical as long as they are sequential.

[jjrich1977]

I desperately need the solution for this too.

Should someone start a kickstarter campaign to bring this feature to VLC?

[drutgat]

[SOLVED] Make sure that you have the toggle for LOOP ALL selected in the VLC playback controls section selected in order to have VLC play back the entire folder contents. Select the RANDOM toggle to circumvent alphabetized playback or one of the other ordination options on that toggle to suit preference.

This has been driving me crazy for years, too.

But, for the first time, I actually have .mp3s in a folder in Win 10 playing sequentially using the LOOP ALL control that cbnorwood posted.

So, thank you very much cbnorwood.

Just to give some more context, here is what I did:
1. Open VLC
2. Click 'Playback'
3. Click 'Play'
4. The 'Open Media' box should pop up; and the default tab should be the 'File' tab (if not, find and choose these options)
5. Click the 'Add' button on the right, to add files
6. Navigate to the folder containing the audio files you want to play
7. Open the folder - i.e., so that you are now 'in' the folder, with the list of tracks displaying
8. Click the 'Name' checkbox (should be top left) in order to select all of the tracks
9. Click 'Open'
10. Click 'Play'
11. If the LOOP button (bottom left) is not in 'LOOP ALL' mode, pause the track playback, and toggle the LOOP control until 'LOOP ALL' is chosen
12. Click 'Play' and the files should play sequentially
(13. It seems that once one has toggled the LOOP control to 'LOOP ALL', it will stay in that default state when one exists and re-enters VLC, so there will be no need to toggle it again).

[tzx613]

This thread started in early April 2015, and evidently was a highly requested feature back then and still hasn't been added to this day. The post above me is clearly someone else that thinks he has a solution but does not understand the problem. That right there is just way too many steps if you're an every day frequent user and you just wanna play some files.

Long story short.. For me...

If I have a folder full of files.. I want to be able to CLICK on any file in the folder, have it play, and then when it's done playing, play the next god forsaken file in the folder. And then the next, and next, and so on, until it plays the last file in folder, in the correct order. That's it. That''s the ONE thing VLC does NOT have.. TO. THIS. DAY. Oher media players on Windows have this feature. Simple as that. I'd gladly PAY for VLC to have this SIMPLE thing!

Again, as people have said, with anything else, VLC is superior to other media players. But gosh darnit it'd sure be nice to have this feature.....

[drutgat]

Actually, for the person who posted above me, you are right in that there is no way to actually just open a folder and pick a file and play it and have "the next god [sic.] forsaken file in the folder" play after the first one is finished.

HOWEVER, if you follow the steps I outlined above, you WILL be able to select one of the files, and then when it finishes, VLC will play "then next, and next, and so on, until it plays the last file in folder, in the correct order". It really only takes a few more clicks to do this than what I agree is the ideal - to be able to simply click on a folder and have the music tracks play sequentially.

So, given that there is a way to do two-thirds of what you want to do (after a few clicks, 1. choose a file, click on it, and 2. have it play each track sequentially to the end of the folder) in order to have VLC play the tracks, and given that VideoLan does not seem to be addressing this issue at the moment, you have a simple choice - continue to complain, and not use VLC to play your tracks sequentially, OR to engage in a few more choices/clicks, which will become automatic after you do so a few times, in order to get most of what you want.

[tzx613]

Actually, for the person who posted above me, you are right in that there is no way to actually just open a folder and pick a file and play it and have "the next god [sic.] forsaken file in the folder" play after the first one is finished. HOWEVER, if you follow the steps I outlined above, you WILL be able to select one of the files, and then when it finishes, VLC will play "then next, and next, and so on, until it plays the last file in folder, in the correct order". It really only takes a few more clicks to do this than what I agree is the ideal - to be able to simply click on a folder and have the music tracks play sequentially.

If you're like me, and it's a TV show you're trying to watch, and you keep leaving, coming back to it, leaving, coming back to it and you have to do it every time, it can be a nuisance.

[djomlastic]

In Windows I use MPC-HC and it has this feature. Last couple of months most of my work is in Linux where I use VLC, so I wrote an extension (lua script). I've been using it for a couple of months (it had some issues with VLC 2.2.2, but was very usable). Now for the last couple of weeks I switched to VLC 3.0.3 Linux build and it works fine - no issues at all, I use it for watching video courses, tv shows and music. It's only briefly tested it in Windows 7 with VLC 3.0.3 portable and it seems to work fine. If someone wants to try it here is the git repo (details are explained there).

[Joachimtobias]

Hi.

I can´t find the - new topic - option, so I´m dumping my irrelevant issue here hoping that a moderator will redirect it to where it belongs.

My problem is with the - do you wish to continue - (where you dropped off..loosley transelated from the Norwegian version of VLC). It stays to short. I´ve never managed to push it on time. That was it.

[hgg]

For those still interested : I have written a solution which doesn't need extra clicks like lua extensions or @drutgat solution : link.

The idea is simple : when you double-click a file, instead of directly opening vlc, it runs a script which searches all the files with selected extensions, and write a .m3u playlist file that vlc will open.

This .m3u file is swapped so that the first played element is the file you opened. Then due to the fact that a playlist in vlc is circular, ie when you click Next at the last file it will play the 1st file, you can naviguate in the folder of the opened file like in MPC-HC.

[tomasso79]

It is no wonder this hasn't been solved. The guys, who claim they work at VLC support in this thread don't even seem to grasp a concept behind this simple feature:

1) I want to double click a movie clip
2) I want to have a setting inside VLC which will allow me to automaticallly proceed with playing all the subsequent videos by clicking "next". Without creating a playlist. You have written it down in the topic with caps lock ffs. All the other players have it - check them out.

I also created an account on here to post this, because the idea alone seems too complicated for you to comprehend. Meanwhile I figured there is no such feature so I do not have to look. Thanks for nothing I can use other ways of doing this myself, but the question is very specific.

Oh and hgg thank you for your effort - this might finallly be helpful, but I will rather stick to the built-in options.

[tzx613]

Will this feature ever be implemented? I'm glad to know I'm not alone in wanting this feature. Other media players do have it.

[FixtheVLCproblem]

After much tribulation, I have finally figured this out on the Android:

1. Open VLC
2. Upper left hamburger menu
3. "Directories > Music"
4. From here, select the file that you want to play. May need to toggle the repeat options in the settings as well. On my phone, the whole folder will play through.

So, not so bad, the feature is there, although I think they ought to point this out in the manual as I did not find it to be obvious, and I am usually not too bad at figuring these things out.

[Photek]

Just passing by to let you know its 2019 and this feature is still needed, thanks.

[v09]

You are lucky i stumbled upon this thread looking for something else. Even luckier that i made an account since youre all illiterate dummies computer and actual reading comprehension wise. Sorry but not really for the mean words but if youre going to atk the devs of the best player ever add to the fact that its free you deserve it and they probably ignored you guys kuz you are all toxic to say the least

Now since you guys are lacking in the intelligence area edtekk22 answered this two years ago in 2017

On android devices when you go to a folder you want to play there are three dots next to it and when you press those tjree dots it gives you the option to play, append and other options. What you want to do is push play that will play all of the files in that folder consecutively you special little guys you

Now for windows you open vlc that means double click on it or right click and press open or if its on your taskbar singleclick on it. Now that vlc has opened navigate to media in the bar above it should be to the left of playback and audio. Now that you know where media is located click on it. Next you will bee given a choice from a drop down menu, now navigate to where it say "open folder". Now once you have your cursor hovering above it click on it one time. Now a menu will open up where you can navigate to wherever you have your music or video filler that you want to play. Now higlight the folder by clicking on it once with your mouse. Once it is highlighted click on select folder. Then amazingly the contents of the folder will play and in order imagine that. Now for you fancy users who know how to operate a keyboard you can just press ctrl+f to select the folder once you have opened vlc

Sorry for coming off mean but you guys started it and i can see why the devs just let you suffer since all it takes is a little common sense and even if you dont have that then you could have just read the post by edtekk22 who answered the question 2 years ago

[feeritovec]

Now for windows you open vlc that means double click on it or right click and press open or if its on your taskbar singleclick on it. Now that vlc has opened navigate to media in the bar above it should be to the left of playback and audio. Now that you know where media is located click on it. Next you will bee given a choice from a drop down menu, now navigate to where it say "open folder". Now once you have your cursor hovering above it click on it one time. Now a menu will open up where you can navigate to wherever you have your music or video filler that you want to play. Now higlight the folder by clicking on it once with your mouse. Once it is highlighted click on select folder. Then amazingly the contents of the folder will play and in order imagine that. Now for you fancy users who know how to operate a keyboard you can just press ctrl+f to select the folder once you have opened vlc

Still opens all subfolders and their videos...