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Home > More Solutions>Top 15 VLC Shortcuts You Must Know

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Top 15 VLC Shortcuts You Must Know

by Christine Smith • 2024-01-11 10:27:49 • Proven solutions

No matter what software you use, knowing the main keyboard shortcuts definitely makes it easy to use and saves you a lot of time. VLC Media Player is no different. Especially if you are like us who like to use the keyboard more than the mouse, you would love these shortcuts that we are about to share in this post. Using these keyboards can, for sure, increase your productivity and also at the same time, make it fun to use VLC on a day to day basis.

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Shortcut 1. Play / Pause Using The Space Bar Key

Play and Pause are, without a doubt, the very basic and two of the most used functions while using VLC Media Player, and so VLC, to make it easy for its users, has assigned these functions to the biggest and most obvious key on your keyboard - the Space Bar. It is also true that for many other media players too, Space Bar is the default key for Play and Pause functions.

Shortcut 2. Toggling Between The Full Screen and Window Mode

Let’s say you are all set with your friends to watch your favorite movie and just want to switch VLC to the Full-Screen mode; you need not be looking for a mouse anymore; simply press the ‘F’ key. It will allow you to toggle to the Full-Screen mode on VLC with just one press.

Shortcut 3. How to Change Aspect Ratio

vlc shortcuts

Want to change to a different width and height for your video, simply press the ‘A’ key. It will let you try out the various predefined aspect ratios in VLC Media Player and thus allowing you to select the best one out of them. This can save you a lot of time and the hassle of searching through the interface menu options.

Shortcut 4. How to Change The Zoom Mode

It is again simple to switch between the different zoom modes available on VLC; you just have to press the "Z" key to quickly zoom in and out of the window mode.

vlc shortcuts

Shortcut 5. How to Fast Forward Slow - Alt + Left Arrow / Alt + Right Arrow

You can skip a few seconds on the video by simply pressing the Alt key and the direction key / the arrow key in the direction (backward / forward) that you would like to skip (right for forward and left for backward). Each press will skip 10 seconds of your video.

Shortcut 6. How to Fast Forward Medium - Ctrl + Left Arrow / Ctrl + Right Arrow

For you to skip minutes in the video, you just have to replace Alt with the Ctrl key, and the same shortcut will now skip a minute instead of 10 seconds of your video, every time you press the combination.

Shortcut 7. How to Fast Forward Long - Ctrl + Alt + Left Arrow / Ctrl + Alt + Right Arrow

What if you want to skip more than a minute or 10 seconds of your video? It is easy to do; just have to use the Alt and Ctrl keys and the Left / Right Arrow keys to skip 5 minutes at once. This is also the best you can do with the shortcut keys for skipping more than 5 minutes at once; you will have to use the seek bar on the interface.

Shortcut 8. How to Increase or Decrease Volume Using A Shortcut - Ctrl + Up Arrow / Ctrl + Down Arrow

Increasing or decreasing your video volume is also just a few keys away on VLC; simply press the combination of the Ctrl key and the "Up" or "Down" arrow key for getting the desired volume level. This can be especially helpful for those who do not have laptops with physical keys for volume control.

Shortcut 9. Want to Mute The Player - Press M

Not a lot to say on this; it is as simple as it can get, press the M key, and you can mute / un-mute your video at any time.

Shortcut 10. How to Adjust The Audio / Video Effects on VLC - CTRL + E

There are many effects (audio and video) color contrasts, equalizer, etc. that you may want to adjust after you have started playing your audio or video, all that you need to do to get the effect you want is press the Ctrl key along with E which brings you to the Audio / Video Effects window on VLC Media Player. Now, you can make the desired changes as you please.

vlc shortcuts

Shortcut 11. How to Check The Time (Remaining and Elapsed) – Press T

Unlike the Window mode, when in the Full-Screen mode, you don’t get to see the time (remaining and elapsed) by default, there is a shortcut though for you to get this information; simply hit the T key on your keyboard to fetch 3-second info on the top right-hand side of the Full-Screen mode.

vlc shortcuts

Shortcut 12. How to Play Faster / Slower - Press + Or -

Do you want to run the video in Fast or Slow mode that increases or decreases your video playback speed, simply press the + or - a key to increase or decrease it.

Shortcut 13. How to Switch to The Next or Previous Item in The Playlist - Press N Or P

Playing multiple items through a playlist? Want to skip from one item to another? You can achieve this by simply pressing the N (for playing the next item) or P (for playing the previous item) key.

Shortcut 14. How to Stop The Playback - Press S

Simple, but not many of us know that if you want to stop the video that is being played for any reason, all you need to do is press the S key, and it will stop the video immediately on VLC Media Player.

Shortcut 15. How to Hide or Unhide Controls - Ctrl + H

These shortcuts will allow you to control VLC almost fully without depending on the GUI at all. The above shortcut keys can actually make using VLC a fun experience.

vlc shortcuts

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