VLC: Activate visualizations - how it works

If you activate the visualizations in the VLC player, the music playback shines in a completely new light. We reveal where you can find the chic feature and how to add more cool visualizations to the VLC Player.

Activate visualizations in the VLC player

If you play music with the VLC player, by default only the cover of the current song appears in the preview. With a few clicks, color visualizations can also be displayed that move to match the beat.

1. To do this, start the VLC player and play the desired song.
2. In the menu bar click on "Audio" and then on "Visualization".
3. Select one of the visualizations displayed in the submenu to activate it.

VLC Player: Install and use additional visualizers

By default, the VLC Player offers six different visualizations. If that is not enough for you, you can install additional visualizers from projectM free of charge.

• To do this, open the developers' website and download the current collection of visualizers. This is a file of the format tar.gz.
• Extract the file to any folder. You can find detailed instructions on this in another practical tip.
• Under the extracted data you will find the folder "presets_milkdrop". Copy this folder into the path "C: \ Program Files \ VideoLAN (x86) \ VLC \ Visualizations \". If the path does not yet exist, create it yourself.
• Now start the VLC Player and click on "Settings" under "Tools".
• In the new window, activate the "All" item in the "Show settings" section at the bottom left (see screenshot).
• In the left window, navigate to "Audio"> "Visualizations"> "projectM".
• On the right side, click the "Browse" button next to "projectM preset path" and navigate to the above path.
• Apply your changes by clicking the "Save" button. Then you can activate the new visualizer "projectM" as described above. The VLC Player then uses a random, new visualization.