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VLC For Android has finally surpassed the 100 million downloads mark for Android’s Google Play Store. The media player has always been a popular choice for video playback on PCs and laptops, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that it has become a popular choice on mobile too. The player offers a veritable gold mine of customization options and is a well-known go-to for media playback of all types since it supports nearly all of the available media formats. Moreover, its open-source nature makes it very appealing to many users – although that may also have contributed to problems previously reported with the application. It also includes all video and audio codecs without extra downloads, which not many competitors can claim. While VLC may not be the most popular video playback tool, as of this writing, its rapid growth since 2017 shows the great strides that developer Videolabs has made with ongoing updates to both functionality and form since the app’s 2015 release.
Beyond updates that consistently allow users to play even more media in different formats than before, VLC also sees plenty of updates that improve the overall experience through bug-fixes and similar enhancements. The most recent update provided several of those, as well as adding the ability to save the audio delay settings for Bluetooth headphones and listening devices. It also included network disk browsing, options to save favorites from network devices and URLs, playlist creation, pop up video, and to allow subtitles to be downloaded for offline viewing. On the aesthetics front, the update also brought consistency between the Android TV version of VLC and the version found on either Android tablets or smartphones. In late 2016, Videolabs also updated VLC For Android to include support for 360-degree videos, as well as bringing other useful features.
While VLC may still not be the most popular Android app currently for video playback, it is certainly showing itself to be a major contender. 100 million downloads and an average 4.5-star rating from over 800,000 reviewers is a great start. With any luck, and continued hard work from the developers, it could easily steal the top spot within the next couple of years. For those who still haven’t given VLC For Android a look, or who haven’t tried it out since its debut as a somewhat buggy beta for the platform, it is definitely worth giving a shot and you can pick it up via the button below.