VLC, as default video player, still not playing videos automatically out of Thunderbird

Cara Summerfield

12/4/22, 12:02 PM

I have made VLC my default media player, but it still won't automatically play my videos sent in Thunderbird email. I have Ubuntu 20.04. How do I fix this problem? Thank you.

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vlc

default-programs

ChanganAuto

12/4/22, 2:08 PM

If VLC is a snap then it can't due to snap confinement. "Automatically" in this context means the video files are downloaded to temporary folder that unlike /home/user or /media an /mnt (when enabled), snaps do not have access to.

CPH

12/4/22, 2:53 PM

One idea you can try if it is installed via Snap (not sure if you can actually do this, but worth looking into) is creating a script that video files point to when you open them. Inside that script, you would tell vlc to open that file

Score:0

Ubuntu

MrChuck

12/23/22, 1:07 AM

I have this problem too. I can see three possible solutions:

Add the videolan ppa to ubuntu and install the unstable version from videolan. There are loads of caveats indicating that this may cause sadness down the road but it works for me at the moment, and thunderbird's old behaviour is more or less restored.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:videolan/master-daily
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vlc

First you will need to snap forget vlc and uninstall the outdated offical ubuntu version, because as far as I can tell in Ubuntu 20.04 neither will work.

Raise a bug against Thunderbird reminding them that their strategy for handing off attachments to a video player does not work with snap-based vlc due to the filesystem access restrictions snap imposes.
Raise a bug against snap reminding them that their stategy for securing filesystem access breaks things that other applications rely on.

Good luck with 2 and 3...

The meta problem seems to be that different project teams are beavering away at all this wonderful stuff and not co-ordinating with each other, and that it's no-one's job in particular to sort out this sort of mess.

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MrChuck

12/23/22, 4:00 AM

I have reported this as a bug in Thunderbird: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727018 in case anyone is interested.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: VLC, as default video player, still not playing videos automatically out of Thunderbird

TH: VLC ซึ่งเป็นเครื่องเล่นวิดีโอเริ่มต้นยังคงไม่เล่นวิดีโอโดยอัตโนมัติจากธันเดอร์เบิร์ด

RO: VLC, ca player video implicit, încă nu redă videoclipuri automat din Thunderbird

RU: VLC, как видеоплеер по умолчанию, по-прежнему не воспроизводит видео автоматически из Thunderbird

VI: VLC, với tư cách là trình phát video mặc định, vẫn không tự động phát video từ Thunderbird

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