VLC for Android

Videolabs

About this app

VLC media player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files as well as discs, devices, and network streaming protocols.

This is the port of VLC media player to the Android™ platform. VLC for Android can play any video and audio files, as well as network streams, network shares and drives, and DVD ISOs, like the desktop version of VLC.

VLC for Android is a full audio player, with a complete database, an equalizer and filters, playing all weird audio formats.

VLC is intended for everyone, is totally free, has no ads, no in-app-purchases, no spying and is developed by passionate volunteers. All the source code is available for free.


Features
––––––––
VLC for Android™ plays most local video and audio files, as well as network streams (including adaptive streaming), DVD ISOs, like the desktop version of VLC. It also support disk shares.

All formats are supported, including MKV, MP4, AVI, MOV, Ogg, FLAC, TS, M2TS, Wv and AAC. All codecs are included with no separate downloads. It supports subtitles, Teletext and Closed Captions.

VLC for Android has a media library for audio and video files, and allows to browse folders directly.

VLC has support for multi-track audio and subtitles. It supports auto-rotation, aspect-ratio adjustments and gestures to control volume, brightness and seeking.

It also includes a widget for audio control, supports audio headsets control, cover art and a complete audio media library.


Permissions
––––––––––––
VLC for Android needs access to those categories:
• "Photos/Media/Files" to read your all media files :)
• "Storage" to read your all media files on SD cards :)
• "Other" to check network connections, change the volume, set the ringtone, run on Android TV and display the popup view, see below for details.

Permission Details :
• It needs "read the contents of your USB storage", in to order to read your media files on it.
• It needs "modify or delete the contents of your USB storage", in order to allow deletion of files and store subtitles.

• It needs "full network access", to open network and internet streams.
• It needs "prevent phone from sleeping" in order to prevent... your phone from sleeping when watching a video.
• It needs "change your audio settings", in order to change audio volume.
• It needs "modify system settings", in order to allow you to change your audio ringtone.
• It needs "view network connections" in order to monitor whether device is connected or not.
• It needs "draw over other apps" to start the custom picture-in-picture widget.
• It needs "control vibration" to give feedback on the controls.
• It needs "run at startup" to set recommendations on Android TV launcher screen, only used on Android TV devices.
• It needs "microphone" to provide voice search on Android TV devices, only asked on Android TV devices.

Ratings and reviews

Overall, this app has been a great experiment to use. Especially with android auto. However, a recent update in the last few weeks has removed the shuffle button from the controls when using a Playlist. I can't seem to find any sort of settings or sub menu on the android auto interface so the only way to initiate a Playlist shuffle is with Google assistant. This has made the app practically useless for me in regards to android auto as it has become far more of a hassle and distraction to use

VLC used to work well for accessing shared folders over SMB, but now it’s become unreliable. I can see my shared folders, but they show up empty, even though other apps like CX File Explorer have no issue pulling the contents. This has been frustrating, and I just want it to work like it used to. Hoping for a fix soon because this has disrupted my ability to use VLC for network media playback.

Casting Sucks. I understand casting is streaming to a device. But why is it like a live stream. If you have to rewind for any reason, it becomes a hassle. When it messes up, you can be halfway on a video, and then the timer will say it's 1 second in if you Pause, then you try and play it messes up again. Most videos being casted will tell you the length of the video on the right, not say, live as if it's a live stream. Everything else is what you would want in a video media player.

What's new

* Fix crash when downloading subtitles