How to Manually Edit Recent Files List in VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is the most popular media player as far as desktop computers are concerned. Whether you are a Windows user, a Linux user or have a Mac, you can use the powerful VLC media player on your computer. The most impressive thing that makes everyone a fan of VLC is its ability to play all types of media files without requiring any externals codecs. So instead of installing two or three software to be able to play video files on your PC, you can install just VLC media player and then you will be able to play all sorts of video and audio files.

This is why you will find VLC media player installed on Windows computers whether desktops or laptops. Everytime, you watch a video using VLC media player, it stores it in the recent files list. A total maximum of 10 files are kept in this recent files list. Anybody who has access to your PC, will be able to launch VLC and then check all the recent files that you have been playing.

Here is a method using which we can manually edit this list:

  1. Close all the running VLC player windows. Press Win+R hotkey to open the Run dialog.
  2. In the Run dialog, type %AppData%\vlc and press Enter.Edit VLC Recent Files List
  3. In the folder that opens up on your screen, locate a file named vlc-qt-interface.ini, right-click on it and choose to edit it. Alternatively, you can also double-click on this file to open it in Windows Notepad.
  4. In the file, find the section RecentsMRL and replace its contents with your own.Edit VLC Recent Files List If you cannot think of anything, then you can copy paste the following: 
    list=file:///C:/Movies/The Thing(1982).mp4, file:///C:/Movies/The Thing(2011).mp4
  5. Save this file and launch VLC media player and check its recent files list. This time you will see only the files that you manually added in VLC.
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