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.
The best media player for Android. I only have one issue that prevents me from using it full-time. I have a few albums that are hi-res FLAC files and VLC stutters when playing them. This happens with wired or wireless audio, and doesn’t occur with other programs, such as Simple Music Player. I’ve tried changing the audio output setting to AudioTrak and OpenSL, but it doesn’t make a difference. Edit: Thanks for the response, looking forward to the next update!
Mostly great. Very extensive options in the settings. Only issue is the failure to save audio/video playlist info despite having those settings checked. Often cannot resume playlist after only a minute or two paused. Nonetheless, the developers of VLC very clearly have a deep understanding of the user experience. I can’t think of a better UX than VLC, when it comes to customization and all, not to mention its versatility. You guys are the best!
I have loved VLC player for over a decade. So excited they made an app for Android. However navigation is very clunky. The worst part about it is if you’re playing a song you can’t continue playing as long until you go back into the app and research for that song. It does have a player in the notifications pull down but Play, rewind and fast forward won’t do anything. You can only reopen the app
VLC is my go-to media player on Android. Out of all of the music players I’ve tested, this one is the most reliable one. No ads, no data collection, and a good user interface. My only problem is that sorting by recently played isn’t an option, so to just have pure album covers for music sorting, I have to choose by recently added.
I’ve had to edit my review down to 3 stars, lately VLC has been hard to deal with. Since I first started using the app, I’ve always only allowed access to my music folder. Now, if you don’t give access to all files and folders, it causes lots of issues, like having to reestablish the path to your music everytime you open the app, which is a major pain. So, I guess that means VLC wants all or nothing. Well, I choose nothing if those are my choices. VLC should not demand access to everything!
This app worked very good until I upgraded my phone to Pixel 6,. Then one day I opened the app and all my music was gone. I have not been able to figure it out or get my music files back. Before that the app was good i did not see adds, it always resumed play back exactly where it stopped, integrated with my Bluetooth cardo packtalk com. Displayed album artwork. Now I am musicless. Very upsetting to turn on your phone and your music player is suddenly empty with no files.
I used to love this app (used it for years on phone and computer) but after upgrading my phone, I learned that certain folders are banned from reading media according to them. I used the default folders and it still won’t read my video files. I have to dig each one out individually from downloads each time I want to watch and there’s no way to tell which folder is banned. Not worth the effort, I’m sure there’s better apps at this point.
Been using it on a Linux platform so thought I’d give the android app a try. Primarily used for playing FLAC audio. Just wish it would start playing automatically when it connects to my car. I have noticed that it and the Linux app occasionally has a pop or click during playback. Same files on another app play fine. I like that it’s free, open source and has no ads or in-app purchases. Not quite 4 stars IMO.
I used this for about a year for Android Mobile. I mainly used it because i use the pc version and that is great. Let me get to the point. This app plays the music files back and the album art shows up quickly – but sometimes not at all! The main problem is that it has dropouts while playing various, uncompressed audio files. I used to think it was my wire connection, then Android Auto, but when i switched apps, the other app had no dropouts and the audio files played with a true hi-res audi
I love this app because it can play almost any kind of media (main reason I’ve had VLC on every computer since 2014), but you know what would be nice to have? A “Folder” option under music instead of “Albums”. For whatever reason the app doesn’t recognize certain Soundtracks, Greatest Hits, Collabs, etc. Kinda ridiculous having 36 “Unknown Albums” comprising of anywheres from 1 song going up to the biggest one with 1456 songs! This could easily be a 5/5 app if this issue was fixed.
Absolutely no where near what the computer program is. The app is incapable of separating video and audio files for playback reqiring deletion of video files to use as an audio player only. No ability to mark files to not play, it is play or delete the file, nothing like remove from library. Additionally it randomly stops requiring starting the app again. When the screen lock is on if you unlock the phone the music resets to the last song playing when the phone was locked. The app sucks.
Very inconvenient. The player lacks one of the most important feature is to remember the last playback and the ability to resume playback where you left off. Instead you always have to navigate, select what to play each and every time. Its especially dangerous on the road. The player has to be able to play from where it left off whenever you press the play button. Or when phone connects to car stereo and automatically starts playback, but this player cant play upon connect. Have to select.
I’ve been using the VLC app on my Android device for a little over 3 or 4 years. Recently in the last 4 months I’ve noticed a lot of bugs popping up. The biggest one as someone has mentioned in a previous review almost 80% of the time if I pause an audiobook and try to replay it more than a few minutes later it either tells me that it cannot play multiple Medias at the same time or it will freeze and I have to go back into my browse menu, find the book and restart it.
Overall this is a great app. With one critical exception! Would you please allow the time to skip ahead and rewind to be adjusted. The 10 second double-tap ahead is a painful limitation to an otherwise great Audio/Video player. There should be a selection of various times such as 10s, 30s, or 5 min. Also a triple tap skip ahead feature that would triple whatever time is chosen so it then becomes 30 sec, 90 sec and 15 min respectively. Surely this is an easy fix for what’s clearly an oversight.
Since the death of Play Music this has been my go-to for media on my phone. It works pretty well, I also use it to listen to soma.fm and has Android auto capability. My only complaint is with the Android Auto interface itself. I have a lot of albums on my phone and the ones I listen to more frequently are towards the bottom of the list, every time I go back to the albums it takes me all the way to the top and I have to scroll down again.
A UI is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good. Everything else about the player is super solid! But please bring back the old “return to video view” button instead of the bizarre “long tap the cover to restore the video” thing with a recurring pop-up that always ends up covering up the very control its trying to explain. (Or at least give us an option to disable the recurring explainer pop-up?)
I’ve been using VLC ever since Google killed off Play Music. It’s been a good replacement, but recently, there’s been an annoying bug. The music I’ve been playing will no longer resume when I get into my car. Also, the notification panel controls lose functionality after the app is unused for more than a few minutes.
I updated to the newest version and does not perform as good as the previous one. Keeps on dropping out the playlist when you switch between car, speaker or headphones and, you must start the Playlist from the beginning. Please, fix it or let us know how we can switch back to previous version. Thks.
Great media player and possibly one of the best on android, until recently. I use this to play FLAC’s on my phone, but now I’ve been getting some strange stuttering at random parts of some songs. Almost half my library is affected. It’s just too damn noticeable and it’s ruining my listening experience. I tried other media players on my phone and pc just to be sure it wasn’t the FLAC files and only VLC for android had this issue. Even Spotify had no issue playing local FLAC files.
If you’re watching a video, switch to anything else so that it plays in the background, close the app and then find back to try to watch the same video, the audio will resume as if there is no video, and you can’t get it to play the actual video. EDIT: The long press on the cover brings up a green screen, Pixel 3a playing a webm
Over all, really enjoyable. But the playlist function does not work right. It just makes up a playlist of my music for no reason. It also does not keep the tracks in the play lists. So I have a bunch of playlists that I cannot delete, all empty, including the one I tried to put together myself.
Love VLC, but this version is buggy. If I pause and don’t resume playback within 2-3 minutes, I can’t resume audio within the pinned media player (notifications area) or on the lock screen. I have to exit the app and restart it for it to remember where I left off. This bug’s a bummer, since I control VLC primarily from the pinned app/lock screen.
There’s a bug that makes the app not show subtitles. Yes it is enabled. This bug has been around since 2021. The bug is vlc player has trouble showing roboto font family. Work around is Settings -> Advanced -> Custom libVLC options -> “–freetype-font=SEC” Without quotation marks of course. I don’t get it. After 2 years of this bug, why still not fix it?
I’ve loved Android VLC to play audio for 3 years until 3 months ago when the app no longer remembered the last track. That problem apparently got fixed in last update BUT as the expression goes “one hand giveth the other taketh away”, now, the option to “play all” starting from the folder level is gone. “Play all” has been changed to “Append” and don’t know what it does. A major pain when you want to continuously play a folder with multiple cds or nested folders. Will give 5 stars when fixed.
Music now stutters at regular intervals on both this app and on my PC. So i had thought it was my bluetooth headphones. i tried my PC with a different pair. Same result. Its VLC. Windows Media Player doesnt have this issue nor does spotifies local player. VLC is busted its not fun listening to music for it to pause for a second to buffer every 3 to 5 seconds in a song…. for all my music
Update made it terrible to navigate. The new widget is annoying and doesn’t even look close to what the widget is supposed to look like. I can’t close out of a movie anymore via the widget anymore. And something was done to the movies when you click on a title. Its a pain to get it to the interface where it plays like it always has.
I have used vlc for years without any issue. It’s the go to for viewing videos. I used to use it for audio playback as well. But that now sucks because EVERY SINGLE AUDIO TRACK FOR EVERY ALBUM IS DUPLICATED. This is on both my android phone and tablet. Uninstalled and reinstalled but it still keeps duplicating all audio entries even though I verified only one of each file exists
Since the last update audio files on my Pixel 4a don’t resume from where I left off if I pause for more than a minute or two. When using my aftershocks Bluetooth headset pressing the start stop button has no effect whatsoever after 2 minutes manually tapping the file in the playlist will start it up from last position for a few more minutes but after about 5 minutes or so that causes the file to start over from the beginning. I have checked every setting I can think of and reinstalled
An excellent video player right there! Which is being successful in playing almost any media formats and streaming corners of contents from Radio to Video. Using it since 2008, how time flies.. I remember using it in my laptop to stream movies and now I do almost every media activity here from conversion to mixing! Greetings on your comeback in India! It’s not just an Android review, considerably it’s a multi-platform review for the ‘Best Media Player App Ever’. Thank You for sticking with us.
Been using this app for years. I average about six audiobooks a week as I drive for work. The most recent update has screwed something up. Anytime I pause and go away from the app for more than about 3 minutes, it won’t resume where I left off. It says “multiple media cannot be played” and picks an arbitrary song from my library to play. If they get this bug fixed, it’s definitely a 5-star app.
the user interface is seemingly intentionally designed to be as annoying as possible and potentially to cause epileptic seisures. if you don’t move the mouse for 3 seconds, it automatically forces you into full screen. there was a basic explanation of how to do everthing in the beginning, and it is all so inconveniently designed. just put buttons for everything at the bottom of the screen and give the OPTION for full screen. the key is to give the customer freedom so they can actually enjoy it.
VLC has such a strong history as an amazing media player and nonprofit, and I’ve used it for over a decade and will continue to use it. BUT recently it’s had an error where it cannot resume audio files and just seems to shut down and completely forget its place when I try to resume saying, “multiple media cannot be played.” So if I’m listening to a 14 hour audiobook and have to stop to have a conversation then in order to start it up again I have to try to find my exact place in all of that.
Good at everything…except seeking! Jumping forward or back using any method often results in the audio beginning to play for several seconds before the video “catches up.” Really frustrating, since I use this feature a lot. The drag method is unique and nice for those times where double-tapping isn’t appropriate. Unfortunately, due to the bug I have to rewind further than the part I want to see, making the accuracy benefits dragging brings meaningless. Please fix!
The video changes after pausing and switching apps or screen timeout. It will pick up a completely different video in my folder or playlist at the same timestamp where the original one that was playing was paused. This did not occur until the most recent update and I can’t seem to figure out how to fix it. Sometime while playing a video only playlist it switches to audio only. To get the option to switch back to video I have to turn off and on my screen to get the setting to populate.
VLC is the only worthwhile media player on both Android AND PC. Everything else is inferior garbage fit only for people who think Windows 95 and installing “search bars” into their browsers is a “smart thing”. It has soooo many options to change and tweak things. Performance is also the best. And like most “must-haves” it’s freeware. This is also one of the few pieces of software that is free that I actually donated to. I’ve been using VLC since the very beginning.
I’m a long the VLC user, Linux, Windows and Android. It’s been my one size fits all media player. Would love to give Android VLC 5 stars here, but one problem, when playing audio from a playlist, the equilizer keeps turning itself back on everytime I switch tracks. This is a problem because when playing audio over Bluetooth to my car stereo, the EQ is causing distortion, even when the EQ is set to flat. There doesn’t seem to be an app-wide setting that disables the EQ. Am I missing something?
This app is just as good as the laptop version I’ve used for years. It installed on my Samsung with no problems and is working great. It’s loaded with useful features and is much more versatile than most other players. The ability to place bookmarks in a file so you can easily return to that spot is extremely useful to me, for example. Highly recommend VLC.
No ads anywhere. No ad bar at the bottom. No showing ads between screens. None. This is what I wanted and VLC came through. Thank you. I also like the format because the app shows me all my media files with a quick scan. I turned my old phone into a multimedia player that can be used anytime offline. VLC is the best.
New version 3.5.2 is inadequate and slower to load. Can’t long press the fast forward or reverse buttons to seek anymore. It is nice you can change the amount of seek time instead of having it fixed at 10 sec. Also when playing videos on A-B repeat the UI controls don’t drop down until you click on the screen. Lastly In order to resume video playback in display mode from playing in the background the user now must long press the small cover icon on the lower left instead of one simple click..?!!
Great app. Needs tweeting. Issue 1 playing music. When playing you cannot skip forward to start wherever you want. You select play all at any place and it decides it will start at the very beginning. Issue 2. To go along with issue 1. Whenever you pause it. The app stops and you have to go back and restart and encounter issue number 1
Great player! Only issue is from the latest update. Previous versions didn’t have this issue. Now if I’m using it in my car (or with Bluetooth headphones) and I pause the music too long, then I can’t resume playback without hitting the play button on my phone. That is to say the play button on my car or Bluetooth headphones don’t do anything. The threshold for the play/pause button becoming ineffective is ~5 minutes. Seems like a software bug.
Locking the phone mid-video, followed by unlocking the phone to resume playback causes the app to load a completely different video from another folder. This folder is also one that I chose ‘not’ to scan so that it doesn’t show up on my main video library. Although, there is a pattern for some reason. It always tries to load the first video from one of the custom playlists I saved. All of my videos are being read from a micro SD card, just in case it’s a bug specific to that.
Best audio player! Just a shame that you can’t set it as your default media player anymore for whatever reason. Might be why other people are having problems. Currently I’m only allowed to pick Spotify and yt music. Which both suck and littered with ads unless you give them money. 👎 Have a z flip 4, been having problems recently of resuming my music unless I open the phone. But when music is playing, the cover screen controls work just fine. Don’t let it pause for too long!
This software has become garbage. I can’t get it to do the simplist of things. Playing through a directory of audio files doesn’t work. It shuts off during songs. Won’t go to the next song. The interface is horrible. No way to jump ahead in a song. Standard buttons like fast forward, reverse or a scroll bar aren’t present.
Very clunky user interface. When playing shuffle mode from a Playlist, if you stop and come back, it starts shuffle over. Sometimes I briefly see a “continue playing” song x,y,z but the message disappears too quickly to click. Also sometimes alters the pitch of a song being played slightly, making it sound out of tune (always slows it down). Very annoying. Also often “stutters” the beginnings of songs.
Having an issue when using my chubby buttons 2 remote. It works fine but when I pause for an extended time, I cannot restart from the remote. I reinstalled and got the same result. I ran the same test with Spotify and it restarts no issue. I’ll have to leave vlc behind if it isn’t fixed. Note that this used to work with previous version. Thx. Just read someone else reporter same bug.
Normally I would give this app five stars I have been using it for a very long time. The recent version is very buggy, audiophiles will not resume playback at the right place until you hit the 10 second rewind button. The three-dot menu to the right of each file is now missing, making it impossible to delete files from VLC itself
I’m a long time VLC user. It’s my default desktop & mobile media player. App wise, I only have one real complaint. On the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, there’s no persistent notification badge up top. I do see it within the swipe-down notifications. I’d like the option to have the persistent badge, to realize it’s still open, if I need to close it. Also, sometimes this app shows up as “paused” in the swipe-down after a reboot. But overall as an app media player, I love it.
Just sick of this app that used to work well and then needed to be “improved”. Remains a 1 star. How this app can’t restart an audio book after being paused for 2 hours, but then will restart it all evening, like 12 hours later when I don’t care anymore. Just infuriating. Make more “improvements” while this app still can’t play music without start/ stop/ pausing/playing everytime! It’s been years and multiple devices and it can’t even start and properly play music files!
My favorite app. Being using it for years. Can u guys add alphabetical order to the Playlist. It seem to just play the songs based on how they were added to the Playlist and can’t be changed. And yea as someone mentioned once pause for a bit it doesn’t resume or auto play like it used to.
Can’t stream from my computer to my Samsung Tablet. Always SMB Authorization pop up. Sometimes clicking “OK” or “CANCEL” will help, but not all the time. After two weeks of troubleshooting…it worked. For one day. Then it started again. Do not use if you’re streaming from PC to any Android device. Very disappointed. Honestly, maybe it’s time the devs start taking some money and hiring some full time developers and releasing more fixes and updates, too many “meh” responses from devs.