VLC on desktop will not open vlc:// urls

On iOS, you can use a url like vlc://https://... and it will open VLC and start streaming the https://... part.

• #8988 (closed)
• #8990 (closed)
• vlc-ios@1742d917

I would like the desktop versions of VLC to do the same thing.

It appears to be possible already, using extra helpers on mac and windows: https://github.com/stefansundin/vlc-protocol

Is there any reason not to build this into VLC directly?

For Mac, it appears we need the following in Info.plist:

  <key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
  <array>
    <dict>
      <key>CFBundleURLName</key>
      <string>VLC</string>
      <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
      <array>
        <string>vlc</string>
      </array>
    </dict>
  </array>

On Windows, it appears to be controlled via the registry:

reg add HKCR\vlc /ve /t REG_SZ /d "URL:vlc Protocol" /f
reg add HKCR\vlc /v "URL Protocol" /t REG_SZ /d "" /f
reg add HKCR\vlc\DefaultIcon /ve /t REG_SZ /d "%~dp0vlc.exe,0" /f
reg add HKCR\vlc\shell\open\command /ve /t REG_SZ /d "\"%~dp0vlc-protocol.exe\" \"%%1\"" /f

The vlc.exe binary itself will also need to learn to strip the vlc:// prefix when encountered. Again, vlc-ios does this already in https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc-ios/-/blob/master/Sources/URLHandler.swift#L349-358

cc @tguillem @jbk