« Gangs of New York coming to Blu-ray
Point Break on Blu-ray »

How-to: Launch VLC Full Screen with no windows/controller

So here’s the scenario… You want your Mac HTPC to look and feel like a home theater component and not a personal computer, so what can you do?

You can start by having DVDpedia set up to launch to full screen on boot, you can set your dock to automatically hide, and you can even hide the menu bar, but every time you go to play a movie VLC launches with that ugly controller/playlist and zooms to fullscreen through a windowed border, like this:

This is ugly, looks like a normal personal computer, so its not at all what we want.

What we want is this:

Its a subtle difference, but an important one if you want your mac to feel like a “movie machine” rather than a PC.

So here’s how you do it.

Part 1 - First we’ll hide the controller

1. Launch VLC (if it was already running, then quit and relaunch)

2. Minimize the playlist. (if open)

Minimize Playlist

3. Move the controller as far off the screen as possible.

4. Leave VLC running and unused for approximately 30 seconds.


5. Quit VLC.


6. Reopen VLC - the controller should have stayed where you hid it.

At this point you can quit VLC and test your progress by double clicking an associated movie file. VLC should now launch the movie but the controller will be hidden.

Hint: if you’re running into trouble, make sure that between the time when you launch VLC and quit VLC the only thing you do is move the window. If you play a movie or run other actions the new window position might not take.

Part 2 - Going windowless

So at this point when you launch a file you should see a border around the window before the movie goes full screen. This is how we get rid of that.

1. Go to the preferences panel of VLC


2. Click on the advanced checkbox at the bottom of the window.


3. Drill down into: Interface > Main interfaces > macosx.


4. Change the “Opaqueness” setting to 0.


5. Click on Video setting and tick the box for “Fullscreen video output.


6. Save your new preferences.

Quit VLC and try launching a movie file. It should now open by magically fading into fullscreen mode. And if you launch from DVDpedia it will seamlessly fade from DVDpedia full screen to VLC fullscreen!

NOTE: If you lose your controller and can’t remember where you put it, you can simply delete your preferences file which is located at: Users/user_name/Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc.plist.
Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Pownce
  • Technorati

Tags: , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Home Theater, How-to. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “How-to: Launch VLC Full Screen with no windows/controller”

  1. Nora Says:
    April 14th, 2008 at 3:14 am

    Thanks for this great post! We added a link to it from our support page because I’m sure other users will find it useful too.

  2. Mr. Ink Says:
    April 14th, 2008 at 9:19 am

    Thanks for the link! I’ll try to add more tips and tricks as often as possible.

Leave a Reply