home-assistant.io/source/_integrations/vlc.markdown

title	description	ha_category	ha_release	ha_iot_class	ha_domain	ha_platforms	ha_integration_type	related	ha_quality_scale
VLC media player	Instructions on how to integrate VLC media player into Home Assistant.	Media player	0.35	Local Polling	vlc	media_player	integration	docs title /docs/configuration/ Configuration file	legacy

The vlc platform allows you to control VLC media player.

{% important %} The VLC media player {% term integration %}, is currently only available for installations that are based on the Home Assistant Core in a Python virtual environment. {% endimportant %}

Configuration

To add a VLC media player to your installation, add the following to your {% term "configuration.yaml" %} file. {% include integrations/restart_ha_after_config_inclusion.md %}

# Example configuration.yaml entry
media_player:
  - platform: vlc

{% configuration %} name: description: The name to use in the frontend. required: false type: string arguments: description: Additional arguments to be passed to VLC. required: false type: string {% endconfiguration %}

Only the "music" media type is supported for now.

This action will control a background VLC instance, therefore you cannot use this to control a VLC instance launched on your desktop, unlike the Kodi media player for example.

Full configuration

A full configuration for VLC could look like the one below:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
media_player:
  - platform: vlc
    name: speaker_1
    arguments: "--alsa-audio-device=hw:1,0"

Additional configuration on macOS

On macOS python-vlc won’t find the VLC plugin directory unless you add this to the user’s .bash_profile that is running Home Assistant:

export VLC_PLUGIN_PATH=$VLC_PLUGIN_PATH:/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins

Additional configuration on Linux

You need to add the homeassistant user to the audio group:

sudo usermod -a -G audio homeassistant