How to configure Movie Player (totem) to append to playlist instead of replacing it

Question

For instance, a right-click on media files in Nautilus could offer a "Add to media player playlist" entry.

Answer 1

Totem

To get Totem to accept one of more files for the playlist will need a slight-modification to its desktop launcher as described below.

How to edit the totem launcher

What we need to do is edit the totem launcher. Let's not edit the installed version in /usr/share/applications because any changes will be lost when totem is next updated.

We can copy the launcher to our home folder to prevent this from happening.

• First open a terminal and copy and paste the following:

  cp /usr/share/applications/totem.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
  nano ~/.local/share/applications/totem.desktop
  

• Find the line that looks like Exec=totem %U

• Change it to be Exec=totem --enqueue %U
• Save, logout, login
• Start totem and right click totem in the launcher and choose Keep In Launcher.

You can now close totem.

How to append to the playlist

You can now append to playlist in two ways:

• Drag and drop files from File Manager (Nautilus) onto the totem launcher. It will add the selected file/files to the playlist. I think due to a bug, don't drop files onto the totem launcher if the totem moves into the middle of the screen (I think its called spread mode). If you do, your Unity session will freeze, although Totem will continue playing.
• Given the ALT-TAB issues with drag-and-drop on, perhaps an easier workaround is to right click the file/files on File Manager and choose "Open With Movie Player". With the --enqueue trick above, files can be repeatedly added to the play-list.