Interfaces

Interfaces are the way you interact with VLC.

Main interfaces

VLC has 4 main Interfaces:

• The wxWidgets Interface (wx) is the default interface on Linux and Windows.
• The Qt Interface (qt) will be the default interaface on Linux and Windows
• The skins2 Interface is an interface where you can customize VLC's look (Works on Linux and Windows).
• The Mac OS X Interface is the default (and only) graphical interface on Mac OS X.
• The BeOS Interface is the default (and only) graphical interface on BeOS.

Full list

The full list of interfaces is

wx	Default wxWidgets interface on Linux and Windows.
qt	Future default Qt4 interface on Linux and Windows.
skins2	Load VLC with a skin. (Linux and Windows only)
macosx	Default Mac OS X interface
beos	Default BeOS interface
http	Web Interface, used for controlling VLC from over a network
gestures	Mouse Gestures, where you can control vlc by moving the mouse
rc, ncurses, telnet	Console Interfaces, non-graphical interfaces.
showintf	Show Intefaces module
hotkeys and joystick	Control VLC with the keyboard/joystick
dummy	Don't use an interface

Listing the interfaces available

There are some other interfaces, you can view the list by running VLC with the -l option:

vlc -l

This also displays the muxers and encoders/decoders. On linux, run

vlc -l | grep -i interface

to display the interfaces.

Using an interface

To run VLC with a different primary interface, use the following command:

vlc --intf name

You can also use

vlc -I name

You can also change the default in the Preferences.

However you can also launch more than one interface:

vlc --intf wx --extraintf sap,telnet,http

This will launch VLC with the default wxWidgets interface, but will also launch the sap, telnet and web interface in addition to the wxWidgets one. The default for this can also be changed in the Preferences.

Note that if you only use the dummy interface, you won't be able to tell vlc to quit - you may have to break it manually with Ctrl+C; or use vlc:quit as the last item on the playlist.