58 Responses to “How to disable VLC Media player system tray popup (updated for v 2.x)”

1. Luke on September 21st, 2009 2:38 pm

   Many thanks! I’d been searching for ages for a way to disable those annoying vlc systray tooltips.

2. smee on October 24th, 2009 4:36 pm

   Thank you, that is the most annoying thing, I almost uninstalled VLC because of that garbage. =)

3. Matt on November 6th, 2009 3:17 pm

   Same here, almost got rid of VLC for this! Trying to turn it off is just as annoying as the popup itself!

   Surprised that such an amazing player has this so hidden in menu’s.

4. Ronald on November 11th, 2009 10:00 pm

   I don’t think it was much of a bother on my end, but it certainly does become annoying when I am in a musical trance and trying to complete a task. To have my thoughts interrupted by that pop up though, can irritate me beyond words.
   I had recently re-installed VLC and had scoured the preference menu for that very option. I must have been looking for the wrong thing.
   I really appreciate the helping hand, much love.
   bookmarked 🙂

5. Ryan on December 6th, 2009 3:02 pm

   Thanks! Those sure were annoying to get in ones workspace.

6. Jess on January 4th, 2010 1:48 pm

   I just thought the sound was annoying. I don’t want to hear that little bubble sound every time the track changes.
   Thanks!

7. Herm on January 15th, 2010 11:33 am

   Thanks for this! If only it weren’t hidden so deep in the preferences.

   I can’t believe they thought it’d be a good idea to turn it on by default. A media player that makes unnecessary sounds over the top of what it’s playing – what were they thinking? 🙂

8. Oberhausen on February 2nd, 2010 8:32 am

   Yeah!! This is it! No more “blubb”!

9. Jess on March 29th, 2010 5:58 am

   I was wondering if they had the option to turn it off for so long!! Thanks for this i cant believe it was hidden so deep it shouldn’t be lol

   Thanks this will help a lot of people out

10. Bryan Ogilvie on April 8th, 2010 1:04 pm

    THANK YOU! 😉 I don’t even show my taskbar at all (to save screen space), so the notifications were a real pain.

    Good looking out,
    +B

11. hamking on April 17th, 2010 10:03 am

    OMG THANK YOU!!

    That check-box was far more cryptic than it needed to be.

12. shmuelman on April 18th, 2010 1:05 pm

    Hi, I am a super cool programmer and I am going to think up and add a hundred features that are extra super cool to turn my media player into an arcade game!!!
    We would all be better off if programmers, rather than seeing how much junk they could pack into a program, study Bauhaus design or some such thing to understand that minimal is almost always enough.
    Thanks for the tip – if I wanted bloat I would use Winamp.

13. Johnson Yip on April 28th, 2010 1:23 am

    Thanks, now I’m not bothered by pop-ups anymore when I’m listening to my playlist or internet radio.

14. Anton on May 21st, 2010 4:32 pm

    Thank you very much too. I also noticed, that sometimes the popup goes not away, only if you click. And it is not easy to find settings in VLC! Not very user friendly. I searched often for “VLC disable popups” but now I got a hot on your page. You will get many viewers with this article.

15. Nikolay on May 24th, 2010 1:42 am

    HOOOOOORAAAY!!!!!!

    And you need to restart the player

16. Grevas on September 7th, 2010 3:33 pm

    The last comment saved my keyboard. Thanks for this info (of course for the hint too, i found it by myself – but since it didn’t work…)

17. jesse on November 24th, 2010 2:34 am

    thank you!!!! you are awesome!!!! i almost gave up, thinking that it could not be disabled. but in the back of my mind i knew there had to be a way. thanks for finding it and sharing it.

18. Amol on December 2nd, 2010 4:33 am

    Hey thanks a lot..those msgs were bugging me a lot..btw..one tip, u hv to save the preferences and then restart the vlc player for the changes to take effect..

19. Rob on December 30th, 2010 11:03 am

    Thanks a million. I was trying to screen capture a home made dvd and this was the lamest thing ever in the way and no other websites would seem to clarify. Blessings for you my friend!

20. Jim on February 26th, 2011 2:30 am

    Thank you … Really THANK YOU!!! 🙂

21. Leigh on June 29th, 2011 11:25 am

    I have just made it so i have avril lavigne playing on my desktop constantly but everytime the video changes VLC pops up and its highly annoying is there anyway to stop that?

22. Pete on September 5th, 2011 10:32 am

    Thank Jahweh for that. Who wants a tone every time a new track starts? Many thanks HB Blog

23. Gliktch on September 17th, 2011 4:50 am

    Pete, you should say Thank Hristo – Jahweh did not give you the answer 😉

    And I say thanks HB too, because this answer is easier to find here than on the VLC pages :p VLC is very very good at what it does though so I can forgive some little quirks or obscure tickboxes!

    Kind regards,
    – Matthew

24. Kenny on November 19th, 2011 2:01 pm

    OMG Thank you SO MUCH!!! This should be unchecked by default!

25. Tom Helmer on January 13th, 2012 7:07 am

    Thank you so much! VLC and its users deserve this little help!

26. ss09 on January 26th, 2012 1:52 am

    I love you. thanks.

27. Peter Pope on March 2nd, 2012 6:26 am

    Thanks! You are great for helping us NOOBs! Searched for ages.

28. Suunil on March 9th, 2012 2:16 am

    Many thanks. It was annoying but you rocks!!!

29. David Vere on March 16th, 2012 4:50 pm

    Finally! Life saver (ok slight exaggeration there), but seriously how annoying was that pop!?
    Thank you.

30. . on July 15th, 2012 7:45 am

    Thanks for this!

31. j-No on September 26th, 2012 10:58 am

    Thank you so much!

32. chib on January 29th, 2013 2:56 am

    Many thanks for this info. This noise between titles was really annoying.

33. Henri Alexandre Oberlin on July 26th, 2013 10:33 am

    Hi,

    In recently upgraded my antiquated VLC in Windows for version 2.07. I had the issue mentioned in this page. First I did not have a menu bar, but could find the “Tools” option in the context menu (with a right mouse click, SHIFT+F10 does not work). Then I could not dig up the “Notify on track change” option mentioned above. It might have gone in this version. Instead, the following worked:
    1. Select “Tools > Preferences” in menu;
    2. Select the “All” radio button at the bottom left;
    3. Select “Interface” top item on the left pane;
    4. Uncheck the “Interface interaction” checkbox (second to left on the right part of the dialog)
    5. Click on “Save”
    Done

    Hope this helps.

34. Jeff on August 27th, 2013 6:30 pm

    Thanks Henri Alexandre Oberlin! The original instructions are antiquated with the newer versions.

35. jadik on October 16th, 2013 6:07 am

    Many thanks, Henri Alexandre Oberlin!!

    Your step-by-step helped me to disable error & warning messages on VLC v2.0.8 running on Mac 10.8.4. As Jeff shared, the v2 updates have tucked this functionality away, such that making this change has felt a bit like the challenge of finding Waldo!

36. Ted on December 2nd, 2013 11:50 am

    Thanks those popups were distracting me so much I was thinking of uninstalling VLC and using something else unless I could remove them. Why they made it so hard to fix is a mystery as everything else about VLC is boss.

37. Flo on April 29th, 2014 6:40 am

    Thanks a lot!

    That was so annoying on radio streams. Never found without your tip!

38. John Smith on June 20th, 2014 8:45 am

    Hi!
    The info, how the option is named helped me in the end.
    I have the Version 1.1.11, the inferface texts in German.
    There were no box to check or uncheck for this.
    Then I changed another box, something like load ‘qt-interface (texts)’.
    Then my VLC always immedeatly shut down after starting.

    So I had to edit the settings-file.
    It’s “vlcrc”. It’s a plain text file.
    There I set:
    # Show notification popup on track change (boolsche (logisch))
    #qt-notification=1

    to 0.

    On Win 7 it in the directory:
    C:\Users\[yourUserNameHere]\AppData\Roaming\vlc

    Funnily enough the other file “vlc-qt-interface.ini” isn’t the one with the settings.

    Horray!
    And don’T forget to end the VLC-program before changing the vlcrc.

39. John Smith on June 20th, 2014 10:40 am

    ): The popup messages are back.
    I have VLC minimezed now.
    Maybe there is another additional setting to prevent those popups while the window is minimezed.

    Or the version I have is buggy.

40. Gabz on July 13th, 2014 6:42 pm

    I just downloaded vlc plus the skins (which don’t work). The pop ups are driving me crazy.

    The instructions given…”Go to Tools-> Preferences -> All -> Interfaces -> Main Interfaces -> Qt
    and uncheck Notify on track change”

    ….don’t work. There is no ‘All’, no ‘Main Interfaces’, no ‘Qt’ and no ‘notify’ to uncheck.

    Should I just uninstall the whole lot and give it up as a bad joke? I’m still running Windows XP.

41. oscarts on October 5th, 2014 7:48 pm

    Thanks man!
    That’s just what I was looking for. Works great!

42. Anthony on February 2nd, 2015 2:02 pm

    Really helpful, I was getting so irritated by the little pops and did not realise they were associated with the popup message.
    Thanks.

43. hasib on July 31st, 2015 8:32 am

    great … thanks .. i find what i wanted to do

44. Madeira on August 24th, 2015 10:38 am

    Every song change on KDFC triggers a notification. Now, I’m working distraction free. Thank you so much!

45. Geoff on September 1st, 2015 1:28 am

    Many thanks…. that noise is (WAS) quite annoying…!

46. Lisa on October 26th, 2015 4:05 pm

    Thanks so much!

47. paula on November 10th, 2015 5:28 pm

    1KTHX!! this post will be timeless precious 😉

48. J on November 22nd, 2015 11:58 am

    Thank you so much for the info

49. Julien on November 30th, 2015 8:13 am

    Thank you for the tip!

50. Aziz Tabak ( Ünal'?n Babas? ) on December 12th, 2015 9:33 am

    Many Thanks… Despite VLC has changed deeply since 2009, the tip still works !

    So, thank you…

    By the way, Rest in peace Aziz Tabak…

Leave a Reply