Popular VLC media player is getting a major Android release after a year of total silence

by Cosmin Vasile / Dec 04, 2017, 7:48 PM

360-degree video support

Videolabs, the team behind popular VLC media player, is breaking the silence one year after the last major update hit their Android app. It looks like a new version of VLC has just been released in the Google Play Store, one that brings a host of new features and improvements.

For starters, VLC version 2.5 adds Android Auto support along with 360-degree videos. Also, if you have a device powered by Android Oreo, you'll be able to enable PiP (Picture-in-Picture) mode in VLC.

New audio player style

Day/Night mode has been implemented too, as well as custom equalizer presets. The changelog also mentions a new gesture available to all VLC users, which will allow them to seek by 10s when they double tap on screen edges in a video player.

Furthermore, a new Search activity and integration with Google Now are now included in VLC, along with a more dynamic and Material-compliant UI. You'll also notice some audio improvements in the video player and better RTL support.

Finally, both the app and the video player should now have improved startup speed. Videolabs has already released VLC 2.5 in the Google Play Store, so you can go ahead and try it out now if you need a more than decent media player.

source: Videolabs

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4 Comments

1. HansP

Posts: 542; Member since: Oct 16, 2011

It does feel like VideoLAN is slowing down a lot lately, I recently switched from VLC on Windows to MPC-HC (yes, that ugly old Windows 95-looking player) because VLC isn't getting any proper support for new media formats. It's a bit unfortunate as the VLC interface and feature sets are nicely streamlined and customisable. (It's of course a problem for the future that MPC-HC seems to have reached its end of line in updates this year. Is streaming and the likes of Plex really taking all the attention these days?)

posted on Dec 04, 2017, 10:54 PM 1

2. Podrick

Posts: 1280; Member since: Aug 19, 2015

I have switched to MPC-HC(with K lite) long time ago, UI maybe ugly but the video quality is much better compared to VLC. You can also switch to MPC-BE, MPC-HC fork with better looking UI.

posted on Dec 04, 2017, 11:15 PM 0

3. WAusJackBauer

Posts: 447; Member since: Mar 22, 2015

Daum Potplayer all the way. Just need to change a very important setting after installing. Preferences, Audio, Normalizer/Freeverb, untick enable. Few other options I change like to make double clicking to fullscreen but otherwise its the best media player. https://potplayer.daum.net/

posted on Dec 04, 2017, 11:49 PM 0

4. HansP

Sorry, that looks more like one of those scam players with forced bloat and spyware. The fact that it really haven't gotten an update since Microsoft sold Windows 8 says it all.