Photo and video slideshow via VLC media player

Learn how to create a slideshow from multiple photo and video files via VLC media player. This guide includes some additional tips and tricks like custom ordering via file metadata information.

For some reason I always struggled to just create a simple photo and video slideshow out of files on my computer. Sure you can use the basic Windows slideshow feature or open all files in the Preview application on macOS but these options always fail for some reason or do not behave exactly the way I want.

Once again I was searching for a cross platform application and suddenly I found the perfect solution:
VLC media player!

After using VLC for years I did not know that you can open photos too and it provides a lot of options for viewing videos and photos in a playlist together.

Best of all you can control your file selection via the command line!

Use VLC via terminal (cli)

VLC media player provides a command line interface (cli). This way you can start the program with custom parameters.

Of course you have to download and install VLC media player on your computer.

macOS

After installing VLC on macOS you will not be able to use its cli command by default. First you have to create an alias command.

So just run the following code in your current terminal session or add it to your ~/.zshrc file to keep the vlc alias command persistent for future terminal sessions.

alias vlc="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC"

Now you can run the help command to get an overview of cli parameters:

vlc -h

Windows

Similar to macOS you have to reference the VLC executable on Windows. The location depends on your installation.

# for 64 bit installs
"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -h

# for 32 bit installs
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -h

Just try which version works on your system.

You could add VLC to the Windows path environment variable as described in this guide (link).

Slideshow command example

You can start a slideshow via VLC by following these steps:

• open a terminal
• cd into a folder with photos as videos
• run the following command

  vlc -f -L **/*.* --no-video-title-show

Command parameters explained:

• -f: start VLC in fullscreen mode
• -L: loop slideshow (start from the beginning after the last one)
• **/*.*: use every file in the current folder or its subfolders
  • ** is important to use subfolders too
  • and *.* instead of just * ensures to reference all files directlybut exclude folders (selecting folder would behave differently)
• --no-video-title-show: do not show filenames for every new photo/video

Change photo playback duration

• in the VLC settings you can adjust the duration of a photo
• as described in this YouTube tutorial:
  • go to VLC settings
  • select show all settings
  • Input / Codecs
  • Demuxers
  • Image
  • change value Duration in seconds
  • save/apply settings

Advanced tips and tricks

Save slideshow as playlist

• after VLC was opened via the command you can view, edit and save the playlist too
• leave full screen in case it is still active
• select the playlist button
• now you could optionally reorder elements
• you can even sort all entries by clicking on the Title column
  • read the section below in case you cannot order the playlist and the VLC window is not focused (macOS problem)
• now save the playlist as .m3u file via File > Save playlist
• you can open this file directly via VLC. Your configured sorting order will get reloaded correctly.
• in case the video/photo file name gets shown after opening your saved preset files you have to change the following setting:
  • VLC settings
    • show all
    • Video
    • disable Show media title on video
    • apply/save
  • you have to completely close VLC and reopen it again. only then the changed setting will have an effect

Fix VLC window focus problem

I noticed this problem on macOS.

The VLC windows does not get focused sometimes. Perhaps this happens more often when your selection contains many hundreds of files.

This missing window focus also effects selecting and sorting files in the playlist view. VLC does not react to clicks.

To solve this issue you just have to change to a different window one time. When you switch back to the VLC window afterwards everything is focused normally and you can select files in the playlist view. Ordering the playlist also works as expected then.

Define explicit file formats

• VLC cannot play .heic (Apple iPhone format)
• this is why I export iOS photos as jpeg
• you can change your vlc command like this to ensure that vlc only tries to open files which it can actually play

  vlc --no-video-title-show -f -L **/*.(jpg|jpeg|mov|MOV|mp4)
  • as you can see it is important that you check if the extension are written in uppercase (and add all versions to the command)

Multiple file patterns

You can reference multiple file patterns at the same time.

vlc --no-video-title-show -L **/*IMG*.jpg **/*PXL*.mp4

Avoid .heic photos

• At the moment (September 2025) VLC media player cannot show .heic photos.
• heic/heif is a format which is used by iOS.
• You can adjust a setting to export/share iPhone/iOS photos as .jpg instead of .heic for better compatibility (Apple guide: Share photos and videos on iPhone)
• you could create a jpg copy and keep the original .heic files
• then for the vlc command you only have to ensure that your file pattern does not include the .heic files.

Order photos and videos by time

• You could create a custom .m3u playlist ordered by metadata fields
• One problem I noticed: Photos and videos of different sources can use different metadata fields for storing the capture time.
• In my opinion the best solution is renaming the file names with a timestamp as prefix and ensure that every timestamp uses the UTC timezone.
• Then you can open many files from different folders in vlc using the patterns described above.
• Afterwards you can order the playlist by file name (Title in vlc playlist view)

You can follow my article for renaming files with a tool named f2.

Alternatives

At the moment I prefer VLC for slideshows because it is lightweight and video playback is stable for most formats. Also you can reference file from several locations without having to manage an application specific library. But here are some alternatives that could be interesting for you.

XNView

modern version is called XnViewMP

• open folders/subfolder of photo and videos files
• start a slideshow
• but I noticed that the video player is not that great in XNView

DigiKam

• great tool to manage photos and videos
• provides slideshow features
• I am not sure about video playback features for slideshows in DigiKam