VLC 3.5.3 gives message "Multiple Media File Cannot Be Played" for all of my music

[ralphthecat]

After using VLC to play music on my Pixel 5A since I got the phone, VLC seemed to have stopped working with the release of Version 3.5.3 on November 3. My phone has Android 13.

All my music (both .mp3 and .wma files) is still listed in VLC, and is visible as Artists, Albums, and Tracks. But whenever I try to play anything, I get the message "Multiple Media File Cannot Be Played".

Strangely, if I use the phone's Files app to open Internal Storage and browse to the folder with my music, then select a music file, then select "Open With", then select "VLC", all files play without any problems.

Is this a VLC problem? Is there some setting I can check? Should I downgrade to an earlier version?

[Aza]

Could you please share some logs? Reproduce the issue and then go to: Settings > Advanced > Debug logs. Then share the logs with the sharing service you prefer (Google Drive, Dropbox, pastebin...).

[ralphthecat]

In trying to create the log, I discovered what the underlying problem on my phone is. It is NOT this version of VLC. Sorry.
To create the log, VLC asked me to "allow VLC all file access". Once I did this, all the files would play. So I apparently had this permission set at some earlier time (and forgot about it). Then it was turned off unknown to me (by Android cleaning up apps, or by an Android or VLC update – who knows?). And I discovered this just after the VLC release.
I am happy to have VLC working again, but this raises several questions:
1) Why does VLC need this very broad permission? Is this always required, or is it perhaps because my music is in a unique folder I have put on "internal storage"?
2) Why isn't this permission listed when you go to Android settings, open Apps, then select VLC? The only permission listed there is "Notifications". I have to go to Android Settings then Apps, then Special App Access to see this permission.

[Spike1]

VLC needs file access permission in order to open the media you want to play. Now, could it be that installation of 3.5.3 no longer asks for the permissions it needs in order to operate?

[Aza]

This is really weird. VLC should have noticed that it lost the permission and display empty lists with a message. We'll take a look.

To answer your questions:
1. This is explained in the first screen. There are 3 permissions levels:
- no permission: VLC have no access to the file system and therefore is only able to read distant medias (http / network)
- "standard" permission: VLC has only access to files that are considered medias by Android. It will exclude a lot of supported formats (such as some subtitle formats for example)
- all files: VLC has access to all files
2. You should ask Google. We have no power on how this settings are displayed by the system

[ralphthecat]

Thanks for the explanation of permissions. I guess my phone had reverted to the "no permission" status for VLC, since none of the media could be played.

Maybe this is not too weird, depending on how the code is written, and how it handles my situation.

I have some 12,000 files, and I only add/modify them very rarely when I download from my PC. So I have turned off the option to have VLC scan for media on startup. It took way too long to scan, and provided me no value since my library rarely changed. Thus perhaps VLC did not update the displayed folders and albums, so I thought it still had access to them. When I had VLC rescan for media while it did not have all-files permission, it listed no audio files at all.