I have been asked: «Can I start a playlist automatically when Ubuntu starts?».

Yes, you can.

A shot of the graphic effects played by Totem when reproducing a song

First of all you need to prepare your playlist. In this example we will use Totem, the default player in Ubuntu. So, load the media files you want to play in Totem and reorganize them in the order you prefer. Remember that Totem will show the playlist in the sidebar.

Now you need to save the playlist. Press the “Save” button, and choose a filename. In this example the playlist will be saved in your home directory and the filename will be “playlist.pls”. So the full path for this file will be /home/user/playlist.pls where “user” is your username.

Now you need to tell your Ubuntu box what to do with this playlist. From the menu “System”, choose “Preferences” and then “Sessions”.

In the first tab press the button Add (+). In the name text box insert “My start playlist” (this name is not important, so choose one you like). In the command text box insert

/usr/bin/totem playlist.pls

Note that in this case we don’t need to add the full path to the playlist.pls filename: Ubuntu will look for it starting from your home directory, that is also the most usual place in which you will store your files. Now you can close the window and restart your computer.

Probably you will also like to start it in full screen mode. In this case you will prefer to use this command:

/usr/bin/totem --fullscreen playlist.pls

The option –fullscreen has two ‘ - ‘. If you have any doubts copy and paste the text. Yes, I know… I chose a very bad font format for this blog. I promise I will change it.

You don’t need to repeat all these steps if you are going to change the media files (songs or videos) you want to play. Just re-open the same playlist and add or remove the songs.

Please note that it is very important you deactivate from automatic start (again in the Sessions configuration window) all the programs that could prompt a password when your computer start. It is even better you deactivate all the programs that are not needed. For example it is very probable that in this case you will not need Pidgin. I will also recommend you to deactivate in Sessions all the items that are related to Evolution.

For any question, just leave a comment.