VLC Media player shortcuts are great for saving you some time. You can perform several actions without even moving your mouse or clicking on the menu buttons. The hotkeys are great for quick video playback actions. Just hit the shortcut keys and see the resulting action instantly.
Here are the shortcuts and hotkeys of VLC Media Player:
File Operations
CTRL + O : Open a single file
CTRL + SHIFT + O : Open multiple files
CTRL + F : Open folder
CTRL + D : Open disk
CTRL + N : Open network stream
CTRL + C : Open capture device
CTRL + V : Open location copied in the clipboard
CTRL + R : Convert and save file
CTRL + S : Stream your media locally or on the internet
Program Operations
CTRL + Q or ALT + F4 or ALT + Q : Quit
CTRL + E : Open the adjustment and effects menu
CTRL + SHIFT + W : VLM Configuration
CTRL + M : Open the message screen
CTRL + P : Open the preferences menu
F1 : Help
SHIFT + F1 : About
Playing Operations
SPACE : Play and Pause a file
N : Next Track
P : Previous Track
F or F11 or Mouse Double Click : Full screen mode on and off
CTRL + H : Switch minimal interface on and off
T : Show current and remaining time information
CTRL + T : Go to a specific time of a playing media
P : Go and play from the start of a file
S : Stop movie
Esc : Full screen exit
E : Switch to next frame
L : Loop off, one or all
R : Random on and off
Subtitles
G : Decrease subtitle delay
H : Increase subtitle delay
V : Cycle through subtitles
Playing Speed
[ : Decrease playing speed
] : Increase playing speed
= : Normal playing speed
Quick Forward and Backward
SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW : 3 seconds forward
SHIFT + LEFT ARROW : 3 seconds backward
ALT + RIGHT ARROW : 10 seconds forward
ALT + LEFT ARROW : 10 seconds backward
CTRL + RIGHT ARROW : 1 minute forward
CTRL + LEFT ARROW : 1 minute backward
Display Options
A: Cycle aspect ratio
C : Cycle through crop display area
Z : Cycle through zoom mode
D : Deinterlace On and Off
O : Switch to original size of the video
W : Wallpaper mode on (with DirectX output)
Sound and Audio Operations
CTRL + UP ARROW or Mouse Scroll Up : Volume Up
CTRL + DOWN ARROW or Mouse Scroll Down : Volume Down
J : Decrease audio delay
K : Increase audio delay
B : Cycle through available audio tracks
M : Mute sound on and off
Shift + A : Cycle through audio devices
Media Information
CTRL + I : View and edit media information like title, artist, album
CTRL + J : View codec information like your media dimensions, audio and video codecs
Playlist Operations
CTRL + L : Switch to playlist or back to media
CTRL + Y : Save current playlist to a file
CTRL + B : Create, delete and clear bookmarks menu.
Disc Operations
Shift + B : Next title
Shift + O : Previous title
Shift + N : Next chapter
Shift + P : Previous chapter
Shift + M : Disk Menu
Shift + H : History forward
Shift + G : History back
Miscellaneous
Shift + R : Start and stop recording
Shift + S : Take snapshot
ALT + C : Crop from bottom
ALT+ SHIFT + C : Uncrop from bottom
ALT + D : Crop from left
ALT + SHIFT + D : Uncrop from left
ALT + F : Crop from right
ALT + SHIFT + F : Uncrop from right
ALT + R : Crop from top
ALT + SHIFT + R : Uncrop from top
File Menu Operations
ALT + M : Open media menu
ALT + L : Open playback menu
ALT + A : Open audio menu
ALT + V : Open video menu
ALT + S : Open subtitle menu
ALT + O : Open tools menu
ALT + I : Open view menu
ALT + H : Open help menu
* Hit the subsequent underlined character of menu item name after opening menu items using the above file menu operation shortcuts. This will open the sub menu. If the same character is underlined for several sub menu items, hit those characters multiple times to navigate to the correct one. Then hit enter to open it.
* You can also learn how to edit these shortcuts to fit your preference.
View Comments (36)
Shift+L is the A/B Loop shortcut... I dont know why its not posted anywhere but I found it on one of the forums and no one seems to know about it.
It would be good to have a hotkey for brightness to save going through a procedure, like SM Player has press for for brighter or 3 for darker.
Missing is a shortcut to quickly rotate the video by 90/270/0 degrees. Without going through menus.
Frame advance - "E" press, works for about a dozen frames then does a big skip ahead... I am using on high frame rate video for precision viewing through 120 fps clips and would love this to work better. Any ideas?
Missing are the skip fwd/back just using the right and left arrow keys. Also, volume up/down just uses the up/down arrow keys on Windows version anywhere. Using the ALT key isn't necessary
When playing a video you can use the spacebar to stop/start (pause) playback but when you are playing an MP3 the spacebar does nothing. Is there a solution to this ? Seems odd that it does not work for both formats.
UPDATE: Updating to Version 3.0.18 (from 3.0.17) has now solved this.
Frist, thank you for VLC!!! It is very good and useful Second, Is there a hotkey for incremental go forward - like 1/10 or 1/4 second? This is very useful for analyzing sports motion. Is it there and I am somehow not seeing it??
Is there any shortcut to minimize VLC player from full screen?
Use the Windows shortcut. It is Windows Key + M.
some of these shortcuts don't work with fullscreen mode. Like hitting Ctrl+B doesn't show bookmarks list while in fullscreen mode, similarly with so many other shortcuts.
Is there a way to enable it/ make it work ? Any amount of help is appreciable.
(btw, I'm running VLC 3.0.16 on WIndows 10)
Try latest version 3.0.18
I found some hotkeys stopped working when I got a new laptop. For instance + used to speed the video on the old keyboard but not the new. The problem was the old keyboard had a + button whereas the new keybord it was Shift + and woudnt be recognised. Anyway the fix was to go to VLC Tools Preference Hotkeys and double click on the hotkey not working, press the key combination you want to set for it and accept the change. It worked for me. Good luck.
some of these shortcuts don't work in fullscreen mode. Like Ctrl+B doesn't show bookmarks list while in fullscreen mode, etc. similarly with many other shortcuts.
Is there a way to make them work? Please, Any amount of help is appreciable.
(btw, I'm running VLC version 3.0.16 on windows 10)