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VLC for Android for Android

By Videolabs Free Editors' Rating

Editors' Review

shelbybrown Dec 8, 2017

VLC for Android is a must-have video player to watch almost any video or audio file you have on your phone. It handles a wide range of multimedia files, it's powerful yet easy to use, and perhaps, best of all, it's a free download.

Pros

Handles a broad range of formats: The VLC player for Android can play most video and audio formats -- including MP4, AVI, Ogg, FLAC, and AAC -- and is the app to turn to if you can't open a multimedia file with your current player. To tweak playback, the app includes a built-in equalizer you can control by dragging sliders.

Handy interface: VLC's playback window does a nice job of displaying the video title, total and remaining time, subtitle tracks, and more. By swiping on different parts of the screen, you can adjust brightness, volume, and playback, as well as navigate through your files.

View or browse files on your device: In the app's browser view, you can see all the videos on your device, individually and grouped by name. If you'd rather browse for a multimedia file, you can use VLC's built-in file explorer to navigate through the folders on your device.

Free and open source: VLC is available as a free download on Android and iPhone devices, Mac and Windows, and Linux. The software is open source, which explains in part why other video players in the Google Play store closely resemble VLC.

SEE: The Best Mobile Apps for Watching Video

Cons

Chromecast not supported: VideoLAN Project, the developer of VLC, said it is working on the ability to stream via Chromecast. The company, however, has been promising support for at least three years.

Bottom Line

The VLC player for Android handles a wide variety of multimedia formats, does a great job of helping you navigate through folders, lets you control playback with gestures, and offers a surprisingly rich collection of tools for setting the quality of audio and video playback. You might be able to find a better free multimedia player than VLC, but we're not sure it would be worth the effort.


Full Specifications

What's new in version 3.0.13

Application:

* Fix subtitles not reloaded when multitasking

* Fix forward/rewind actions with Assistant

* Improve video player accessibility descriptions

* Stability improvements

* Misc. fixes

TV:

* Video player: improve use of seekbar with remote

* Fix crashes in main screen

* Restore recommendations on Oreo

VLC:

* Update VLC core

General

Release November 10, 2018
Date Added November 10, 2018
Version 3.0.13

Operating Systems

Operating Systems Android
Additional Requirements None

Popularity

Total Downloads 139,739
Downloads Last Week 36
Report Software

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Developer's Description

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, to hide the streaming parts.

- It needs "draw over other apps" to start the popup menu.

- 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 with Android TV version.

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