Suddenly the Flatpak version of VLC on Ubuntu stopped playing video files directly from a network fileshare (SMB/windows share) mounted via Nautilus. The error is about VLC not being able to play “smb://” files. That’s annoying because Nautilus is supposed to hide the fact that this is a network share and create then illusion of a local file system. Gemini explained to me that VLC advertises the fact that it understands network resources, so “someone” (sorry, I don’t recall which component in the chain) feeds it that resource. Tweaking permissions with Flatseal didn’t help. Here are two fixes:
Hardcode SMB credentials: Open VLC -> tools -> preferences -> Settings All -> Input/Codes -> Access Modules -> SMB -> enter credentials. That’ll work on the specific network share, obviously not on any other.
The hard way:
cp /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/org.videolan.VLC.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
nano ~/.local/share/applications/org.videolan.VLC.desktop
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# Before
Exec=flatpak run org.videolan.VLC --started-from-file %U
# After
Exec=flatpak run org.videolan.VLC --started-from-file %F
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update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/
George's Techblog 