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Luís de Sousa
Asked: 2016-08-10 01:35:28 +0800 CST

Set the default video player from the command line

  • 772

I would like to set the default video player from the command line. Taking xvideos as an example, I tried replacing all references to Totem by xvideos in the defaults.list file:

mv /usr/share/applications/defaults.list /usr/share/applications/defaults.list.old.totem
sed 's/Totem/xvideos/' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list.old.totem > /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

The contents of this file now look like:

$ cat /usr/share/applications/defaults.list | grep xvideos
application/vnd.rn-realmedia=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
application/x-extension-m4a=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
application/x-extension-mp4=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
application/x-matroska=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
application/x-shockwave-flash=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/3gpp=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/ac3=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/AMR=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/AMR-WB=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/basic=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/midi=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/mp4=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/mpeg=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/mpegurl=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/prs.sid=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/vnd.rn-realaudio=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-ape=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-gsm=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-it=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-m4a=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-matroska=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-mod=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-ms-asf=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-ms-asx=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-ms-wax=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-ms-wma=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-musepack=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-pn-aiff=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-pn-au=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-pn-realaudio=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-pn-wav=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-pn-windows-acm=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-realaudio=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-real-audio=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-sbc=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-speex=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-tta=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-wav=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-wavpack=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
audio/x-xm=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
image/vnd.rn-realpix=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
misc/ultravox=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/3gpp=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/dv=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/fli=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/flv=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/mp2t=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/mp4=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/mp4v-es=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/mpeg=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/msvideo=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/ogg=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/quicktime=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/vivo=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/vnd.divx=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/vnd.rn-realvideo=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/vnd.vivo=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/webm=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-anim=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-avi=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-flc=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-fli=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-flic=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-flv=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-m4v=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-matroska=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-mpeg=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ms-asf=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ms-asx=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-msvideo=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ms-wm=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ms-wmv=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ms-wmx=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ms-wvx=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-nsv=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-ogm+ogg=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-theora+ogg=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
video/x-totem-stream=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
x-content/video-dvd=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
x-content/video-vcd=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop
x-content/video-svcd=org.gnome.xvideos.desktop

However, videos are still being opened with Totem by default, say, if I double click on a movie file in the file manager.

How else can this be achieved?

command-line

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After about an hour of messing around with this I got this working for me, I'm running Ubuntu 16.04.1, I don't have xvideos I have vlc installed, so you can try simply substituting vlc for your player of choice.
    Heres the command I run at a prompt

    % sed -n '
1i[Default Applications]
/^video/{
s/Totem/vlc/
s/org\.gnome\.//p
}' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list > ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list

    running the above command produces 

    % cat ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list
[Default Applications]
video/3gpp=vlc.desktop
video/dv=vlc.desktop
video/fli=vlc.desktop
video/flv=vlc.desktop
video/mp2t=vlc.desktop
video/mp4=vlc.desktop
video/mp4v-es=vlc.desktop
video/mpeg=vlc.desktop
video/msvideo=vlc.desktop
video/ogg=vlc.desktop
video/quicktime=vlc.desktop
video/vivo=vlc.desktop
video/vnd.divx=vlc.desktop
video/vnd.rn-realvideo=vlc.desktop
video/vnd.vivo=vlc.desktop
video/webm=vlc.desktop
video/x-anim=vlc.desktop
video/x-avi=vlc.desktop
video/x-flc=vlc.desktop
video/x-fli=vlc.desktop
video/x-flic=vlc.desktop
video/x-flv=vlc.desktop
video/x-m4v=vlc.desktop
video/x-matroska=vlc.desktop
video/x-mpeg=vlc.desktop
video/x-ms-asf=vlc.desktop
video/x-ms-asx=vlc.desktop
video/x-msvideo=vlc.desktop
video/x-ms-wm=vlc.desktop
video/x-ms-wmv=vlc.desktop
video/x-ms-wmx=vlc.desktop
video/x-ms-wvx=vlc.desktop
video/x-nsv=vlc.desktop
video/x-ogm+ogg=vlc.desktop
video/x-theora+ogg=vlc.desktop
video/x-totem-stream=vlc.desktop

    Now going to nautilus and double clicking a mp4 file it is launched in vlc. I didn't need to hit F5 or logout, it seems ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list is read on every invocation.

    reference - https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/41196/106525

    • 4

  2. In a terminal, First grab all the reference of totem.desktop in a variable and then iterate the variable to set default. For example, if your desired applications .desktop file is xvideo.desktop, Go to /usr/share/applications/ do these in terminal

    videos="$(cat defaults.list | grep Totem.desktop | cut -d '=' -f 1)"
for i in "$videos"; do xdg-mime default xvideo.desktop "$i"; done

    Don't forget to refresh your desktop by pressing F5, though may not required. If it still doesn't seem to have changed log out of the system and the log in again.

    • 2

  3. As of Ubuntu 18.04, when you change a default application in Settings or change a file association in Files, it gets stored in ~/.config/mimeapps.list. To change all video files from Totem to VLC in the same way as the GUI does, you can use:

    sed -n '1p; s/org\.gnome\.Totem\.desktop/vlc\.desktop/p' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list > ~/.config/mimeapps.list
sed '1s/\[Default Applications\]/\n\[Added Associations\]/; 2,$s/$/;/' ~/.config/mimeapps.list >> ~/.config/mimeapps.list
    • 1