Ubuntu 20.04: VLC player not quitting

The vlc player is such a great tool, however it is not working properly on my Ubuntu 20.4 Laptop. Specs: AMD® Ryzen 7 pro 3700u w/ radeon vega mobile gfx × 8 The issue: When I start the player, it is playing properly. But as soon as I close it, the icon stays at the top right corner, and there is no way to play videos with this instance.

I can still open new instances with the vlc player, but then further icons are occurring.

A screen record can be seen here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/hi4guw/ubuntu_2004_vlc_does_not_reopen_once_its_closed/

Any ideas? My current solution is to I kill the process in the terminal

Solution 1:

Go to Tools > Preferences, then Inputs/Codec tab.

Change Hardware Accelerated decoding to something other than Automatic or VDPAU.

Source: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/1871949/comments/8

Solution 2:

I’ve had a similar issue with the VLC media player. I found that the closed player will only stay around and remain unusable when I close it with the window close button (usually a red circle in the top right corner with an “X”). If I instead close the player with Ctrl+Q, Alt+F4 or via “Media” → “Quit”, then the player is closed properly.