One of the practical features of VLC Media Player is the ability to continue the playback from where we left off. Imagine that a 2-hour long documentary is playing in the application. You hit stop by accident. To continue from the same part, we would have to use the time toolbar and click on it several times. It won’t be an easy task to get to the exact spot where you left off. However, there is an inbuilt feature that allows us to resume the movie or video on the exact location where we hit stop. The feature is enabled by default and VLC asks, “Do you want to restart the playback where left off?” The message is displayed on top alongside a “Continue” button. If we press on it, the video playback is resumed.
There are some options to configure the continue video feature. We can choose whether VLC asks for our permission to resume the video or does it automatically every time. There’s also a third option to turn it off completely. But most of the time, we might want it to ask us what we want to do.
To configure whether VLC asks, automatically resumes or turn off the feature:
- Go to Tools > Preferences [CTRL + P]
- On the default Interface tab, there’s an option called Continue playback?
- Choose between Never, Ask, Always; the three options.
- Hit Save to keep the setting.
If you haven’t figured it out already, here is what the three options do:
- Never: It won’t ask and will never continue the video from where we left off.
- Ask: It will ask every time whether or not we want to continue our playback and we can do so by pressing the Continue button.
- Always: It will resume playback immediately without asking.
View Comments (57)
Why I have to redo all the settings I set before again and again after restarting?
Subtitles+size+language, audio + language, it's freakn terrible.
A command line switch (e.g. --resume or --continue) would be awesome and prolly done in 10 seconds for devs to implement.
When the movie is paused. VLC is not turned off. I shut down the operating system. VLC closes. The function does not work.
Doesn't work on latest version 3.0.18 on Mac OS Ventura, when you save the changes in Settings/Interface and quit and restart it plays the DVD menu again.
as far as I can see this lacksadaisical feature requires you to hit stop. It should do that when you just close it as well, therefore this feature is weakly implemented presumably by a person who does not use it much or a lazy slothful developer i.e. the feature is implemented incompletely. Please fix so vlc does a stop itself if playing when you close it or even when you pre-empt a video by another. this is obvious as its easy to reposition to the start than some point you left off.
Thank you it's working!
Does not work. Running latest version on Win10. Still works on my old Win 8.1 but ever since I upgraded PC this feauture does not work.
you should pause video before close window to save where you left your video
ya bro
Worked thanks!
It doesn't work with a portable version. Hope it will be fixed ASAP. Thx!
it doesn't work for me either
Dear developers,
PLEASE make VLC media player's Continue playback button to stay for longer!
Otherwise, this option is ABSOLUTELY USELESS.
That's why I set it to "Always" - no need to rush to push Continue
Push ctrl+P.
Under "Playlist and Instances" with no check box is "continue playback?"
To the right of this is a drop down menu enabling you to change it to Always.
Now your VLC will automatically restart exactly where it left off.
I agree. I like this feature, but it seems to go off too soon and you have to scramble to get the mouse ready before it disappears.
It used to be perfect here but for some reason playback has stopped working :-( I have tried to use both the "ask" and "always". Doesn't make any difference. What's up with that??