How to Disable "Building Font Cache" in VLC Media Player

If you want to disable the slow Building font cache dialog displayed by VLC Media Player that shows every time a new font is installed, then there is a simple way to turn it off. You will just have to go to VLC’s Advanced Preferences [Tools > Preferences > All (radio button)], then navigate to Video > Subtitles / OSD and change the Text rendering module option from Automatic to Dummy font renderer. Then, we also disable the Enable sub-pictures checkbox. This will disable the annoying font cache building message that pops up and delays your experience when starting up VLC Media Player.

The message says

Building font cache Please wait while your font cache is rebuilt. This should take less than a few minutes.

The detailed steps to permanently disable the “Building Font Cache” message/feature in VLC are:

• In VLC, click on Tools from the menu bar and then choose Preferences [CTRL + P]. Simple Preferences will be displayed. This part only contains the simple configurations to customize your experience with this player.
• In the bottom left, under Show settings choose the All radio button. You just switched to the Advanced Preferences. You can see detailed options to configure a lot of things. You will have to be careful here.
• From the left, scroll down to the option titled Video and click on Subtitles / OSD which is found under it. Remember, you're not trying to expand the Subtitle / OSD option. You click on the heading itself. Then in the right, you will be displayed options related to subtitles and other on-screen displays.
• The first heading says On Screen Display and under it you will find Text rendering module. Change that option from Automatic to Dummy font renderer.
• Uncheck Enable sub-pictures checkbox.
• Click Save to keep the changes. You are done.

What’s happening when the Font Cache message is being displayed?

According to a Reddit comment by a VLC developer, this not so great part about the awesome VLC Media Player deals with subtitles using new and crazy fonts and effect. VLC needs to update its font cache time and again to get the list of all the fonts that our systems have in them. Some systems behave incorrectly while building the font cache and the process repeats multiple times.

That is why the message is seen every time you add a new font, even if it just one font. Sometimes the message just doesn’t go away. While creating a cache of the font list is slow, it allows the player to use all those nice fonts in subtitles and other on-screen displays. For most of us who don’t care about the subtitle font and their effects, we can just configure VLC to the Dummy font renderer option as shown in the steps above.

And after installing a new font if you feel you are missing out—then revisit this option, set it back to automatic, restart your player, wait for the font cache to be built, and then turn off the option again.