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Troubleshooting VLC on Ubuntu: What to do when it won’t open

3 min readApr 28, 2023

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VLC is a popular media player that’s widely used on Ubuntu and other Linux-based operating systems. While VLC is generally reliable, there are times when it may not open for reasons that can be difficult to diagnose. If you’re experiencing this issue, don’t worry. There are a few things you can try to get VLC working again. In this article, we’ll discuss some common solutions.

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Troubleshooting VLC on Ubuntu: What to do when it won’t open
VLC Troubleshooting

Update your system:

The first thing you should do when VLC won’t open is to make sure your Ubuntu system is up to date. You can do this by opening a terminal and running the command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

This will update all the packages installed on your system, including VLC. Once the update is complete, try opening VLC again to see if the issue has been resolved.

Reinstall VLC:

If updating your system doesn’t work, the next step is to try reinstalling VLC. To do this, open a terminal and run the command:

sudo apt-get remove vlc && sudo apt-get install vlc

This will remove the existing VLC installation and then install it again. Note that this will also remove any settings and preferences you may have set for VLC, so you’ll need to set those up again…

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Chinmay Roy
Chinmay Roy

Written by Chinmay Roy

Software Engineer | Backend Python/Django Developer | Database Management, REST APIs, Nginx, Linux Expert | Follow on Medium to support.