In the PC world, VLC is thought of as one of the most versatile and powerful media players out there, making it extremely popular among those in the know. The Android version is not much different, but was missing a few features from its desktop cousin and did not officially support Android N, the latest version of Android which is currently making the rounds in a developer preview form. An update today brings the app up to 2.0 and solves those problems quite nicely, bringing full support for Android N and all of its permissions and protocols, while throwing in a significant number of new features for good measure.
The biggest and most notable feature is full support for Android N. Before, the app was not fully compatible with Android N’s runtime permissions and could be unstable or even not run at all; this update fixes that. Android N preview users and eventually those on official N builds will be able to enjoy VLC just like everybody else. Along with that, VLC has rolled out a pop-up video player, a customizable window which complements Android N’s desktop mode nicely and should make tablet owners and custom ROM users quite happy. Users can now access, browse and play content from their local network shares as well, in most formats. Shares in Windows, DLNA, UPnP, SFTP, FTP and NFS now work and if a shared file has associated subtitles in another file, VLC can find them.
As for the somewhat smaller features, users can now download movie subtitles directly from OpenSubtitles in-app, and those subtitles, if needed, can be displayed right to left or in more complex text layouts, as well as the normal left to right. The Android and Android TV branches have also been merged, making the TV interface accessible on any Android device and the normal UI accessible on Android TV. Users can now also create playlists of videos, and have access to an advanced options menu that houses various tweaks and goodies. Rounding out the list of new features is a revival of the old history feature, which can now be disabled if a user so wishes.
