How to play/pause with a single mouse click?

Is it possible to play/pause a movie just by clicking on the window?

I really miss this feature from Media Player Classic, but from what I could find, it's not possible in VLC.

9 Answers

UPDATE on some links posted under this question.

Nurupo's vlc-pause-click-plugin plugin — already mentioned, now fully implements the desired feature (unlike the addon also mentioned here and comming with a requirement of manually enabling it each time, which made it an improbable solution).

The vlc-pause-click-plugin is cross-platform and works with 2.1, 2.2, 3.0 and even nightly 4.x builds.

Installation depends on the platform.

Some settings are needed after installation under Advanced Preferences

Here, for "Pause click" filter, multiple mouse button choices are available: left, right, middle click, and other options

Right mouse click is maybe the best option (while disabling context menu on right click) in case left-click interferes with DVD menus as some people claimed.

As for the difficulty of installing the plugin and accessing the advanced options (like mentioned under this question), that is probably either caused by not following the installation instructions or by not using the latest versions. (I have enabled this feature without any problems with VLC 3.0.8, 64-bit on Windows, Linux and Mac; on Mac I have also tested versions 2.1 and 2.2, and only the last one didn't work.)

This extension of VLC does pause/play with a single click on the screen. It works with versions 2.1, 2.2 and 3.0.

If you right click on the VLC window a menu list comes up with play, pause and more yepon it. I use this all the time.

I've created lua extension for doing exactly what you want to do. Please check project at github or videolan addons page

Note: As of 2021 October, the link below gets redirected to track.vcdc.com. Use caution.

There is a tool called Nifty Windows, it allows you to associate an action with a press of the mouse. These actions can be key combinations, or execution of a program.

Hope this helps.

A funny alternative to left-click would be mouse gestures, as indicated here:

- enable mouse gestures in VLC - select left mouse button - left-click & a quick left-right (or right-left) movement to play/pause. 

The result is real... but you have to avoid other two very similar gestures:

 Move left: Navigate 10 seconds backward Move right: Navigate 10 seconds forward 

DETAILS:

Go to Tools > Preferences [CTRL + P].

Click on All under show settings to go to Advanced settings.

Navigate to Interface > Control interfaces.

Check the option that says Mouse gestures control interface.

Navigate further down to Interface > Control interfaces > Gestures.

To toggle play or pause: click the mouse button you selected and move left and then right: (Also works if you move right and then left)

But the mouse gestures are not customizable (and you cannot chose to disable some of those you don't need). Therefore, avoid other moves like up and down to avoid making other gestures and trigger other actions like down and then left which quits the player

For reference, the list of all gestures:

Move left: Navigate 10 seconds backward Move right: Navigate 10 seconds forward Move up: Increase volume Move down: Decrease volume Move left and then right: Toggle play or pause (Also works if you move right and then left) Move up and then down: Mute volume (Also works if you move down and then up) Move left and then up: Slow down playing speed Move right and then up: Increase playing speed Move left and then down: Play previous track of playlist Move right and then down: Play next track in playlist Move up and then right: Switch the audio track Move down and then right: Switch the subtitle track Move up and then left: Enables full screen Move down and then left: Exit VLC media player 

Apparently the question is still valid.

My workaround - simple and working - is the one using xdotool and xinput.

You need to create a script myVlc (or alias vlc) like this:

#!/bin/bash xinput set-button-map DEV_ID 1 2 10 4 5 6 7 8 9 vlc "$@" xinput set-button-map DEV_ID 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 

It rebinds right_mouse_button into Button10. For middle button just use 1 10 3 4…. To be sure double check with xev.

You have to replace DEV_ID with your mouse id. See xinput.

Or you may grep it as well:

xinput | grep -i mouse -m 1 | sed -E 's/.*id=([0-9]*).*/\1/' 

So the script will be:

#!/bin/bash xinput set-button-map $(xinput | grep -i mouse -m 1 | sed -E 's/.*id=([0-9]*).*/\1/') 1 2 10 4 5 6 7 8 9 vlc "$@" xinput set-button-map $(xinput | grep -i mouse -m 1 | sed -E 's/.*id=([0-9]*).*/\1/') 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 

Then rebind Button10 of your WM into space. For Openbox it goes like that (rc.xml):

<context name="Client"> <mousebind button="Button10" action="Click"> <action name="Execute"> <command>xdotool key space</command> </action> </mousebind> </context> 

Actually one could rebind RMB or MMB directly into space, but that would conflict with default RMB/MMB behaviour. And usually we don't want that.

Using myVlc RMB/MMB will be rebound only while running vlc.

I am using X-mouse button control and it does exactly what you are asking.

Only be sure to use "simulated keys" {SPACE} and untick "block original mouse input" to allow double clicking.

This solution developed and tested by me in Ubuntu 18.04 with VLC 3.

To be able to pause/play VLC player by mouse button, I have created a script file. It runs every time the related mouse button clicked. The script check if the active window title contains "VLC media player". If true, then send "space" key.

Script file content:

wintitle=$(xdotool getwindowfocus getwindowname); p=" - VLC media player$" ; if [[ $wintitle =~ $p ]]; then      xte 'key space'  fi 

xbindkeys needs to be installed to catch and configure mouse events. I edited ~/.xbindkeysrc file and added some codes as follow:

"bash  /home/user/test/control_by_mouse.sh" b:8  #mouse back button 

After that, the following command should be run

xbindkeys 

So, every time I press the back button on mouse, the specified script file run.

To get mouse buttons numbers:

xev 

The folowing packages needed for this work on my Ubuntu system:

sudo apt install xbindkeys xautomation xev xdotool 

Previously I posted this note at