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Arch: Control VLC through terminal commands? (lemmy.world)
submitted 17 hours ago by AstroLightz@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm making a Python script to play music through VLC and I wanted to add a way to control audio playback of VLC, like pause/play, next/previous, etc.

I know I can change shuffle mode before launching VLC with the --random and --no-random arguments. However, is there a way to change playback settings through the Linux terminal while VLC is running?

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[-] utopiah@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I tinker with VLC using and... so far my "trick" is a bit dirty, namely I don't "control" it as much as I killall potential running instances then I start cvlc again with the right parameters. If you want continuity though you might not want that.

Note also that if you plan to do scripting check mpv as it's a bit easier to tinker with IMHO.

Python

Check https://pypi.org/project/python-vlc/ then for Python bindings, that should give you the affordances you need.

[-] Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 17 hours ago

VLC appears to support MPRIS, so commands like

$ playerctl play-pause
$ playerctl next
$ playerctl previous

Should be able to control it. See the Relevant arch wiki page for more info.

VLC also appears to have a TUI interface. Check out the VLC wiki

[-] flameleaf@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 hours ago

VLC also appears to have a TUI interface. Check out the VLC wiki

There's also a CLI interface accessible through cvlc

[-] AstroLightz@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Thank you so much! One more thing: would there be a way to check if the user has playerctl installed on their system? Or is there a Python package like it?

[-] WronglyCommute@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

You could always run whereis playerctl and parse the output with awk or sed

[-] Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 hours ago

That depends on your distro. On Debian/ubuntu(-based) distro's, you can try apt list --installed playerctl, which will output nothing if the package isn't yet installed, or the package name with version info if it is installed. To install it, run sudo apt install playerctl

On arch(-based) distro's, you can try pacman -Qi playerctl, which should return an error if there is no such package installed, or several lines of info if it is installed. To install it, run sudo pacman -S playerctl, ideally after running a full system upgrade with sudo pacman -Syu

[-] felsiq@piefed.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

If you don’t want a playerctl dependency you can use a dbus library to check for mpris players manually, though it’s a little less readable

[-] nfms@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MPRIS

In section 2.3 it explains how to use D-Bus and I think OP should use it instead

this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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