Reset VLC Hotkeys and Preferences

In VLC Media Player, sometimes you have to reset your hotkeys or shortcut keys because you have changed them a lot and they no longer work like they are supposed to. This situation might also come if you have assigned difficult shortcuts to the player that you have now forgotten. Sometimes your preference might change over what keys you’d like to use for shortcuts and you want to change those.

In VLC, currently there is no option to reset only the shortcuts exclusively. In the preferences, we cannot find a reset button for the shortcuts only. There is, however, an option to reset the entire preferences. This will also reset your shortcuts back to the VLC Media Player defaults. But, this also resets all other changes that you have made in your VLC preferences. For example: If you have switched to use a different skin, then resetting your VLC preferences will change it back to the default VLC skin. So, resetting all the preferences option is only suitable if you do not mind resetting all your other settings as well.

To reset preferences and VLC Hotkeys to system default:

1. From the menu bar, click on Tools > Preferences [Shortcut: CTRL +P].
   
2. At the bottom of the preferences option box, you will see a button that says “Reset Preferences”. Click on it.
   
3. A confirmation box will ask: “Are you sure you want to reset your VLC media player preferences?”. Click on OK if you are sure that you want to wipe all your other preference settings to default as well.
   
4. This will reset your VLC custom shortcuts or hotkeys to default.

Also read: How to Edit VLC Media Player Shortcuts (Hotkeys)