Hobbyist Software - FAQs

Auto-Mount drives on Mac

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If you want VLC Streamer or VLC Remote to be able to browse external drives, then they need to be mounted.

You can either do this by manually browsing the drive from your mac, or you can set it to automatically mount the drive.

To mount automatically, do the following

  1. Open the ‘System Preferences’ app
  2. Open the ‘Users and Groups’ preference
  3. Select your user
  4. Select the ‘Login Items’ tab
  5. Click the ‘+’ button and browse to select a folder on your external drive (the finder will automatically open with this folder open).

autoMountPreference.png 78.7 KB

VLC Remote - Troubleshooting

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Most problems that people have relate to a few common issues, so please check these first before more detailed troubleshooting

  1. Check that you have the latest version of VLC installed?
  2. Check that you have run the setup helper application? 
    • (This is much more reliable than trying to perform the setup steps manually)
  3. Check that your phone and your computer are both connected to the same local network
    •  (sometimes the phones connect to other networks that are within reach. You can check this in wifi settings page)

Get that connection
In the setup helper, there is a 'Connection Help' button.
Please click on that, and it will run you through the steps to figure out what is not working.

help button


Still not working...
click to follow connection troubleshooting steps if you'd like a detailed explanation of each required step.

Working But...

I have to run the setup helper every time I want to connect

On the iPhone, VLC Remote looks for computers on your network using Bonjour. If there is no bonjour service advertised on your computer, then the remote won't be able to find your computer.
The setup helper makes sure that there is a service advertised when it runs.
If you can't find your computer when the setup helper isn't running, there are two possible fixes
  1. Turn on a service like file or printer sharing which will advertise on bonjour
  2. Save the remote. To do this, click 'Add Computer', then 'Select from Found Computers'. (For this time, make sure the setup helper _is_ running).
Now your computer is saved, and VLC Remote will try to connect to it even if there is no bonjour service.

My saved remote won't connect when I restart my computer

VLC Remote saves the IP address of your computer. This is the address that it uses to contact your computer and connect to VLC.
Most home routers will give out the same IP address every time they see a specific computer which allows this to work.
If the IP address of your computer keeps changing (you can check the IP address from the setup helper), then you have two options
  1. Change the settings on your router so that it gives out the same IP address each time
  2. Turn on a bonjour service so that VLC Remote can find your computer anyway when it scans the network.

VLC Remote - Tips

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Access Fullscreen from the main page

Turning on fullscreen mode when watching movies is really handy. You can do that with the icon in the main remote page at the top right.
 It's the one that looks like four arrows point outwards.

How to access external drives

(requires paid version)
Unfortunately, VLC doesn't recognise aliases or shortcuts (it just tries to play them), so these won't help you.
There is a dedicated drive button in the browse page that will take you to your full drive list.
You do need to take some steps to make sure that external drives appear in this list:
on Windows
  • Make sure that the drive is mapped to a letter.
on Mac
  • You have to browse the drive manually from your computer to make sure that the system 'mounts' the drive, or use the next tip...

Mac OS: Automatically mount external drives so that they are available to browse on startup

Add a whole folder to your playlist

(requires paid version)
just tap on the 'play icon' next to the folder and all its contents will be added to the playlist.

Stop VLC asking to fix files

this isn't actually a VLC Remote feature, but it is annoying when you are trying to play things remotely. You can control the behaviour in VLC at

Preferences (switch to All preferences in the bottom left)
 Input / Codecs
  Demuxers
   AVI
    Force Index Creation

Start VLC automatically on Windows

The easy way is just to drag VLC, (or a shortcut to VLC) to your autostart folder. This will start VLC in its normal configuration with a window visible.

VLC Remote - Address

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If you are configuring VLC Remote manually to connect to a computer, you'll need to provide the computer's 'Address'

You can enter any internet address which contacts the remote.

  • IP address
    • This is the most common option. You can get your IP address from the 'connection help' button on the VLC Remote helper.
    • It will be something like 192.168.1.1
    • VLC Remote will add the 'http://' automatically and assume port 8080
    • If you are on linux, you can type ifconfig in the terminal to get your IP addresses
  • IP with port
    • If you want to use a custom port, you can enter something like 192.168.1.1:9090
  • Local address
    • If your local network supports it, you can sometimes connect with a local address like myComputer.myRouter
  • Dynamic address
    • If you have a dynamic address, then you can connect over the internet, though this is likely to be slow and painful

VLC Remote - Remote interface doesn't work on Laptop/PC

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You have configured VLC and are running your testing. (possibly with the setup helper)
Even the first step where you check that things are working on your Laptop/PC isn't working

Here are the next steps...

We assume the following:
  1. You have the latest version of VLC installed and it is currently running
  2. You have run the setup app from the setup page
  3. You have tried to go to http://localhost:8080 on your Mac or PC and you don't see a remote control interface

there are three possible problems:

You haven't enabled the http interface

It is worth double checking in the preferences page for VLC to check that it matches the picture in the setup page ( Win Mac ). Make sure that the http interface is selected in the 'main interfaces' tab.

You have changed the port that VLC is running on

In the preferences, click on the http interface (below main interfaces) and check that it is set to port 8080.

Something else is running a web interface on port 8080

Some applications like bit torrent clients might offer their own web interface on port 8080. Try closing other apps, then closing VLC and restarting it. Check http://localhost:8080 again
If this is the problem, then you can set VLC to run on another port.
  1. Close VLC
  2. Open the vlcrc preferences fileThe location of the file is described in the 'Where does VLC store its config file?' section here:http://www.videolan.org/support/faq.html
  3. Find the setting for http-port
  4. Adjust it for the port you want (in the example below, I set it to port 9090 )
  5. Save vlcrc
  6. Restart vlc and try http://localhost:YOUR_PORT 

# HTTP server port (integer)
http-port=9090

(note that the # has been removed from in front of http-port)
if this works, then you can add the computer manually to VLC Remote.
  1. Open the settings
  2. Tap on 'Add computer manually'
  3. enter <IP address of computer>:<new port>
    1. something like 192.168.1.3:9090

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