VLC from the command line on macOS

DATE: 2018-08-06
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee


I download podcasts using pypodd[1], then I want to play the files, but I don't want to leave the terminal. I found out that VLC[2] has a some command line options, including ad really nice ncurses interface. I made an alias in my .bash_profile which starts VLC in the right way and plays a nominated file:

1: https://github.com/johngodlee/pypodd (https://github.com)
2: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (https://www.videolan.org)

alias vlc="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I ncurses"

Then in bash I can type:

vlc file.mp3

to open VLC and play the file.

There are lots of other arguments to use VLC in the command line, most of which are documented here[3].

3: https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Advanced_Use_of_VLC/ (https://wiki.videolan.org)

VLC terminal screenshot (https://johngodlee.xyz)