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

The Achilles heel of this app and the absolute deal breaker is its inability to track play progress, so you can't use it for anything other than 3 minute songs. Even then if you pause play for a couple of minutes, it will reset both the play progress and folder navigation. Forget about audiobooks or anything longer, you will tear your hair out. If you answer an incoming call, it will reset your entire play progress. Considering VLC's position in the player space this is absolutely atrocious.

They've fixed all the bugs I mentioned in my previous review and the app works very well now. Plays music, videos, ect. and is easy to use. My only complaint is it can be a bit of a pain to direct it to your media folders if it is attempting to scan for media. Which it does automatically if the automatic scanning isn't turned off. If you have a lot of files this can take a very long time and I recommend turning it off.

Not having a way to import playlists is incredibly short sighted. This has been on the request list for years. Third time I've changed phones and had to rebuild lists with hundreds of individual songs over again. Not fun. Love the app and the way it behaves like the desktop product. For the vast majority of users, rooting a phone is not the way to go. Having an export function without a way to import that file begs the question why

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