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
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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
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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

Terrible media player, skips the first fraction of a second of every track, has to rescan your entire library each time you open it, sometimes it won't remember your place in a video, sometimes it will. Honestly baffling that it's still this bad after being one of the most popular media players for over a decade, it's so dated it feels like it was last updated in 2014. I recommend MPV instead.

Great for listening to music. Just a couple of issues: one, when I swipe to remove items from a playlist, it also removes other items that I did not want to remove, so I have to replace those items. Two, it randomly stops playing. Sometimes I will be listening to something and the app will just close. Annoying, because it messes up this great app.

When it works it is fantastic, but if you have it installed for a while it forgets it can cast to devices, it buffers, judders and fails to work properly when finally connected. Uninstalling and installing seems to address this but that is an unnecessary measure when nothing else has changed. Positive is that doing that, and repopulating libraries, doesn't take that much time

What's new

* Fix media controls not working after some time on Android 13
* Fix audio notification icon transparency
* Fix some Android Auto and Android TV behaviors
* Fix opening from other apps
* Bluetooth fixes
* Minor interface fixes
* Crash fixes