VLC 2.2.3 fixes Resume feature

VideoLAN, makers of the popular media player VLC, have just released VLC 2.2.3 which can be best described as a bug fix release as it does not introduce new features to the client.

When it comes to features that I like in video players, resume may not be at the top of my list but it is a nice to have feature that I expect media clients to support.

While VLC Media Player did support resume for some time, the feature never worked properly whenever I tried it.

That's one of the reasons why I use other media players, SMPlayer to be precise. I was not the only VLC user who could not get resume to work and I even tried to install add-ons for the program that supposedly got the resume feature working but they too did not work properly or reliable.

VLC Media Player 2.2.3

All of this changes with the release of VLC 2.2.3. If you check out the changelog, you find "Fix resume where you left off" listed as a change.

A quick test with video and audio files revealed that VideoLAN has fixed the issue indeed. VLC Media Player 2.2.3 displays "do you want to restart playback where left off" option as a small prompt in the player interface if the media file was played before in the player.

A click on continue jumps to the last recorded position and starts playback from there. The prompt disappears after a couple of seconds automatically, but you can also click on the close icon to close it right away.

If you have no use for the resume feature, you can disable it in the following way:

1. Open VLC Media Player.
2. Select Tools > Preferences or use the shortcut Ctrl-P.
3. Under Interface, locate Continue Playback and uncheck the option.
4. Click on Save.

VLC won't offer to start playback where it was stopped the last time the media file was played in the program.

As far as other changes in VLC Media Player 2.2.3 are concerned, they fix issues as well but most of them under the hood.

VLC 2.2.3 is not yet picked up by the program's update check feature. You can download the latest version from this page currently as the main frontpage of the project does not list the new release yet as well.

It is only a matter of time until the release is pushed to the frontpage and picked up by the update checker.