VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

media player software Media player software is a type of application software for playing multimedia computer files like audio and video files. Media players commonly display standard media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD play ...

and

streaming media Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a Computer network, network for playback using a Media player (disambiguation), media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of Network packet, packets from a Server (computing), ...

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

developed by the

VideoLAN VideoLAN is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization which software development, develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two computer program, programs for media streaming media, streaming, ...

project. VLC is available for desktop

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and mobile platforms, such as Android,

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

. VLC is also available on

digital distribution platform Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of information or materials through digital platforms. The distribution of digital ...

s such as

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

, and

Microsoft Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

. VLC supports many audio- and video-compression methods and

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

s, including

DVD-Video DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVDs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in most of the world in the 2000s. As of 2024, it competes with the high-definition Blu-ray Disc, while both rece ...

Video CD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video), (not to be confused with CD Video which is a type of Laserdisc) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The f ...

, and streaming-

protocols Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

. It is able to stream media over

computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

s and can

transcode Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target de ...

multimedia files. The default distribution of VLC includes many free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. The

libavcodec libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data. libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPV, xine and VLC media players use ...

library from the

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...

project provides many of VLC's codecs, but the player mainly uses its own muxers and demuxers. It also has its own protocol implementations. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library; however, this library is legally controversial and is not included in many

software repositories A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source or version control, or repository manager ...

Linux distributions A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel (operating system), kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply distribution (marketing), product distribution pe ...

as a result. It is available on iOS under the MPLv2.

History

The VideoLAN software originated as a French academic project in 1996. VLC used to stand for "VideoLAN Client" when VLC was a client of the VideoLAN project. Since VLC is no longer merely a client, that

initialism An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps wi ...

no longer applies. It was intended to consist of a client and server to stream videos from satellite dishes across a campus network. Originally developed by students at the

École Centrale Paris École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by

, a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

organization. Rewritten from scratch in 1998, it was released under

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

on February 1, 2001, with authorization from the headmaster of the

. The functionality of the server-program, ''VideoLan Server'' (VLS), has mostly been subsumed into VLC and has been deprecated. The project name has been changed to ''VLC media player'' because there is no longer a client/server infrastructure. The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the

traffic cone Traffic cones, also called pylons, witches' hats, road cones, highway cones, safety cones, caution cones, channelizing devices, construction cones, roadworks cones, or just cones, are usually cone-shaped markers that are placed on roads or footpa ...

s collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association. The cone icon design was changed from a hand drawn low resolution icon to a higher resolution CGI-rendered version in 2005, illustrated by Richard Øiestad. In 2007 the VLC project decided, for

license compatibility License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requireme ...

reasons, not to upgrade to the just-released

GPLv3 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. After 13 years of development, version 1.0.0 of VLC media player was released on July 7, 2009. Work began on VLC for Android in 2010 and it has been available for Android devices on the

store since 2011. In September 2010, a company named "Applidium" developed a VLC port for

under GPLv2 with the endorsement of the VLC project, which was accepted by Apple for their App Store. In January 2011, after VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont's complaint to Apple about the licensing conflict between the VLC's GPLv2 and the App store's policies, the VLC had been withdrawn from the

Apple App Store The App Store is an app marketplace developed and maintained by Apple, for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS SDK. Apps can be download ...

by Apple. Subsequently, in October 2011 the VLC authors began to relicense the engine parts of VLC from the GPL-2.0-or-later to the LGPL-2.1-or-later to achieve better

, for instance with the Apple App Store. In July 2013 the VLC application could be resubmitted to the

iOS App Store The App Store is an app marketplace developed and maintained by Apple, for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS SDK. Apps can be download ...

under the MPL-2.0. Version 2.0.0 of VLC media player was released on February 18, 2012. The version for the

Windows Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

was released on March 13, 2014. Support for

Windows RT Windows RT is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft and released alongside Windows 8 on October 26, 2012. It is a version of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 built for the 32-bit ARM architecture (ARMv7), designed to take advantage of th ...

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

and

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

were added later. VLC is the third in the sourceforge.net overall download count, and there have been more than 6 billion downloads. Version 3.0 was in development for Windows, Linux and macOS since June 2016 and released in February 2018. It contains many new features including

Chromecast Chromecast is a discontinued line of digital media players developed by Google. The devices, designed as small dongles, can play Internet-streaming media, streamed audio-visual content on a high-definition television or home audio system. The u ...

output support (except subtitles), hardware-accelerated decoding enabled by default, 4K and 8K playback, 10-bit and HDR playback, 360° video and 3D audio, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs, BD-J menu support, and local network drive browsing. In December 2017 the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

approved a budget that funds a

bug bounty program A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many websites, organizations, and software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those pertaining to security vulnerabilities. If no fin ...

for VLC to improve the EU's IT infrastructure. In January 2025, the VLC project revealed a demonstration at CES 2025 displaying offline AI-powered

translation Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...

and

subtitling Subtitles are texts representing the contents of the audio in a film, television show, opera or other audiovisual media. Subtitles might provide a transcription or translation of spoken dialogue. Although naming conventions can vary, caption ...

in the software.

Release history

Starting with version 1.1.0, VLC release codenames refer to characters from

Terry Pratchett Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and Satire, satirist, best known for the ''Discworld'' series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the Apocalyp ...

's ''

Discworld ''Discworld'' is a comic fantasy"Humorous Fantasy" in David Pringle, ed., ''The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (pp.31-33). London, Carlton,2006. book series written by the English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a fl ...

'' novels; an exception is release 2.2.1, which came out shortly after Pratchett's death on March 12, 2015, and which was codenamed ''Terry Pratchett'' in honor of the author himself.

Design principles

Modular design

VLC, like most

multimedia framework A multimedia framework is a software framework that handles Electronic media, media on a computer and through a network. A good multimedia framework offers an intuitive Application programming interface, API and a modular architecture to easily a ...

s, has a very modular design which makes it easier to include modules/plugins for new file formats, codecs, interfaces, or streaming methods. VLC 1.0.0 has more than 380 modules. The VLC core creates its own graph of modules dynamically, depending on the situation: input protocol, input file format, input codec, video card capabilities and other parameters. In VLC, almost everything is a module, like interfaces, video and audio outputs, controls, scalers, codecs, and audio/ video filters.

Interfaces

The default GUI is based on Be API on

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

, Cocoa for macOS, and Qt 5 for Linux and Windows, but all give a similar standard interface. The old default GUI was based on

wxWidgets wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit and tools library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with no s ...

on Linux and Windows. VLC supports highly customizable skins through the skins2 interface, and also supports

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

2 and XMMS skins. Skins are not supported in the macOS version. VLC has ncurses, remote control, and

telnet Telnet (sometimes stylized TELNET) is a client-server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main ...

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

interfaces. There is also an

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

interface, as well as interfaces for mouse gestures and keyboard

hotkey In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most operating systems and applications come with a default set of keyboard shortcu ...

Features

Effects (desktop version)

The desktop version of VLC media player has some filters that can distort, rotate, split,

deinterlace Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video into a non-interlaced or Progressive scan, progressive form. Interlaced video signals are commonly found in analog television, VHS, Laserdisc, digital television (HDTV) when in the 1080 ...

, and mirror videos as well as create display walls or add a logo overlay during playback. It can also output video as

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) character (computing), characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCI ...

. An interactive zoom feature allows magnifying into video during playback. Still images can be extracted from video at original resolution, and individual frames can be stepped through, although only in forward direction. Playback can be gamified by splitting the picture inside the viewport into draggable

puzzle A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are differe ...

pieces, where the row and column count can be set as desired. For audio playback, this feature includes an equalizer and other filters that help customize sound quality.

Formats

Because VLC is a packet-based media player it plays almost all video content. Even some damaged, incomplete, or unfinished files can be played, such as those still downloading via a

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

(P2P) network. It also plays m2t

MPEG transport stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast syst ...

s (.TS) files while they are still being digitized from an

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV (video format), DV videocassette Videotape, tape. Conceived as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders, HDV quickly caught on with many amateur and professional vi ...

camera via a

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony a ...

cable, making it possible to monitor the video as it is being recorded. The player can also use libcdio to access .iso files so that users can play files on a

disk image A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

, even if the user's operating system cannot work directly with .iso images. VLC supports all audio and video formats supported by

and libavformat. This means that VLC can play back H.264 or

MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally International Organization for Standardization, ISO/International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC 14496-2) is a video encoding specification designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to ...

video as well as support FLV or MXF file formats "out of the box" using FFmpeg's libraries. Alternatively, VLC has modules for codecs that are not based on FFmpeg's libraries. VLC is one of the

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

DVD players that ignore DVD region coding on RPC-1 firmware drives, making it a region-free player. However, it does not do the same on RPC-2 firmware drives, as in these cases the region coding is enforced by the drive itself, however, it can still brute-force the CSS encryption to play a foreign-region DVD on an RPC-2 drive. VLC media player can play high-definition recordings of

D-VHS D-VHS (short for Digital VHS) is a digital video recording format developed by JVC in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. Introduced in December 1997, it was designed to record digital video, including high-definition content ...

tapes duplicated to a computer using . This offers another way to archive all D-VHS tapes with the DRM copy freely tag. Using a

connection from cable boxes to computers, VLC can stream live, unencrypted content to a monitor or HDTV. VLC media player can display the playing video as the desktop wallpaper, like

Windows DreamScene Windows DreamScene is a utility that allows videos of the .wmv and .mpg format and other optimized animations to be used as desktop wallpapers. It is one of the many Windows Ultimate Extras offered for Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. Pr ...

, by using

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

, only available on Windows operating systems. VLC media player can record the desktop and save the stream as a file, allowing the user to create

screencast A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture or a screen recording, often containing audio narration. The term ''screencast'' compares with the related term ''screenshot''; whereas screenshot ...

s. On Microsoft Windows, VLC also supports the Direct Media Object (DMO) framework and can thus make use of some third-party DLLs (Dynamic-link library). On most platforms, VLC can tune into and view DVB-C, DVB-T, and DVB-S channels. On macOS the separate EyeTV plugin is required, on Windows it requires the card's BDA Drivers. VLC can be installed or run directly from a

USB flash drive A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and u ...

or other external drive. VLC can be extended through scripting; it uses the Lua scripting language. VLC can play videos in the

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around cam ...

format, a highly compressed format used in recent HD camcorders. VLC can generate a number of

music visualization Music visualization or music visualisation, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated Computer-generated imagery, imagery based on a piece of music. The imagery is usually generated and rendered ...

displays. The program is able to convert media files into various supported formats. Both desktop and mobile releases are equipped with an audio equalizer.

Christmas logo

A red Santa hat appears on top of VLC's traffic-cone logo during Christmas seasons.

Keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts are described in the VLC media player "Preferences". On a Microsoft Windows PC open the Preferences by pressing Ctrl + p. Then click on the "Hotkeys" menu (top right of the screen). There are single-button shortcuts in VLC that don't require Ctrl or Alt button. For example, pressing keys F and G while a video file is running in VLC shifts the file's audio/video sync for 50 millisecond per adjustment. This is useful to fix an issue with the sound being ahead or lagging behind the video.

Operating system compatibility

VLC media player is

, with versions for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, Android,

tvOS tvOS (formerly Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. The software for the second-generation and later ...

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

, various BSD-based systems,

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

, and

Syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. However, forward and backward compatibility between versions of VLC media player and different versions of OSes are not maintained over more than a few generations.

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

builds are available for 64-bit Windows, starting with version 2.0.1.

Windows 8 and 10 support

The VLC port for

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

is backed by a

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

campaign on

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

to add support for a new GUI based on Microsoft's

Metro design language Microsoft Design Language (or MDL), previously known as Metro, is a design language created by Microsoft. This design language is focused on typography and simplified icons, absence of clutter, increased content to chrome ratio ("content bef ...

, that will run on the

Windows Runtime Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a platform-agnostic component and application architecture first introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 in 2012. It is implemented in C++ and officially supports development in C++ (via C++/WinRT, C++/CX ...

. All the existing features including video filters, subtitle support, and an equalizer are present in Windows 8. A beta version of VLC for Windows 8 was released to the

on March 13, 2014. A

universal app Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps (formerly named Windows Store apps, Metro-style apps and Modern apps) are applications that can be used across all compatible Microsoft Windows devices. They are primarily purchased and downloaded via the ...

was created for Windows 8, 8.1, 10, Windows Phone 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile.

Android support

Screenshot of VLC media player on Android

In May 2012, the VLC team stated that a version of VLC for Android was being developed. The stable release version 1.0 was made available on

on December 8, 2014.

Use of VLC with other programs

Bindings

Several APIs can connect to VLC and use its functionality: * libVLC API – the VLC Core, for C and C++ * VLCKit – an Objective-C framework for macOS * LibVLCSharp – Crossplatform

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

bindings to libVLC ( C#/ F#/ VB) *

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

API – the evolution of ActiveX API and Firefox integration *

D-Bus D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple Process (computing), processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org pro ...

controls * Go bindings * Python controls *

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

API *

DirectShow DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...

filters * Delphi/Pascal API: PasLibVlc by Robert Jędrzejczyk *

Free Pascal Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, witexception clausesthat allow static linking against it ...

bindings and an OOP wrapper component, via the libvlc.pp and vlc.pp units. This comes standard with the Free Pascal Compiler as of November 6, 2012. * The

Phonon A phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids. In the context of optically trapped objects, the quantized vibration mode can be defined a ...

multimedia API for Qt and

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

applications can optionally use VLC as a backend.

Applications that use libVLC

VLC can handle some incomplete files and in some cases can be used to preview files being downloaded. Several programs make use of this, including eMule and KCeasy. The free/open-source Internet television application Miro also uses VLC code.

HandBrake HandBrake is a free and open-source transcoder for digital video files. It was originally developed in 2003 by Eric Petit to make ripping DVDs to a data storage device easier. HandBrake's backend contains comparatively little original code; t ...

, an open-source video encoder, used to load libdvdcss from VLC Media Player. Easy Subtitles Synchronizer, a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

subtitle editing program for Windows, uses VLC to preview the video with the edited subtitles.

Format support

Input formats

VLC can read many formats, depending on the

it is running on, including: * Container formats:

3GP 3GP (3GPP file format) is a digital multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services, largely based on MPEG-4 Part 12. A 3GP container may consist of H.263 or H.264 video ...

, ASF, AVI, DVR-MS, FLV,

Matroska Matroska (styled Matroška) is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like ...

(MKV),

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

QuickTime File Format QuickTime File Format (QTFF) is a computer file format used natively by the QuickTime framework. Design The format specifies a multimedia container file that contains one or more tracks, each of which stores a particular type of data: aud ...

, MP4,

Ogg Ogg is a digital multimedia container format designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of digital multimedia. It is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation and is free and open, unrestricted by software patents. Its name is ...

, OGM, WAV,

MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods ...

( ES, PS, TS, PVA,

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

AIFF AIFF may refer to: * Audio Interchange File Format * All India Football Federation, the national governing body of Association football in India Film festivals * Addis International Film Festival, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia * Alexandria Internation ...

, Raw audio, Raw DV, MXF, VOB, RM,

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

VCD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video), (not to be confused with CD Video which is a type of LaserDisc, Laserdisc) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical di ...

, SVCD,

CD-DA Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standardization, standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Rainbow Books, Red Book'' technical s ...

, DVB, HEIF,

AVIF AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is an open, royalty-free image file format specification for storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 in the HEIF container format. It competes with HEIC, which uses the same container format built up ...

Audio coding format An audio coding format (or sometimes audio compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio (such as in digital television, digital radio and in audio and video files). Examples of audio coding f ...

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

, AC3, ALAC, AMR,

ATRAC3 Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) is a family of proprietary audio compression algorithms developed by Sony. MiniDisc was the first commercial product to incorporate ATRAC, in 1992. ATRAC allowed a relatively small disc like MiniDisc to ...

, DTS, DV Audio, E-AC-3,

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

, It, MACE,

, MOD,

Monkey's Audio Monkey's Audio is an algorithm and file format for lossless audio data compression. Lossless data compression does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, Vorbis ...

, MP2,

, Musepack, Opus, PLS, QCP, QDM2/QDMC,

RealAudio RealAudio, also spelled Real Audio, is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelit ...

Speex {{More citations needed, date=May 2025 The Speex project is an attempt to create a free software speech codec, unencumbered by patent restrictions. Speex is licensed under the BSD License and is used with the Xiph.org Foundation's Ogg containe ...

, Screamtracker 3/S3M, TTA,

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

WavPack WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. ...

, WMA (WMA 1/2, WMA 3 partially), XM * Capture devices: Video4Linux (on Linux),

(on Windows), Desktop (

), Digital TV (

DVB-C Digital Video Broadcasting - Cable (DVB-C) is the Digital Video Broadcasting, DVB European consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital television over coaxial cable, cable. This system transmits an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 family digita ...

DVB-S Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite (DVB-S) is the original DVB standard for satellite television and dates from 1995, in its first release, while development lasted from 1993 to 1997. The first commercial applications were by Canal+ in ...

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Fe ...

DVB-S2 Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) is a digital television broadcast standard that has been designed as a successor for the popular DVB-S system. It was developed in 2003 by the Digital Video Broadcasting Proj ...

DVB-T2 DVB-T2 is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial"; it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial telev ...

, ATSC, Clear QAM) * Network protocols:

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

, MMS,

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

Atom Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...

, RTMP, RTP (

unicast Unicast is data transmission from a single sender (red) to a single receiver (green). Other devices on the network (yellow) do not participate in the communication. In computer networking, unicast is a one-to-one transmission from one point in ...

multicast In computer networking, multicast is a type of group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast differs from ph ...

), RTSP, UDP, Sat-IP, Smooth Streaming * Network streaming formats: Apple HLS, Flash RTMP,

MPEG-DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), also known as MPEG-DASH, is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. Similar to Appl ...

MPEG Transport Stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast syst ...

, RTP/ RTSP ISMA/3GPP PSS, Windows Media MMS * Subtitles:

Advanced SubStation Alpha Subtitles are texts representing the contents of the audio in a film, television show, opera or other audiovisual media. Subtitles might provide a transcription or translation of spoken dialogue. Although naming conventions can vary, caption ...

, Closed Captions, DVB,

, MPEG-4 Timed Text, MPL2, OGM, SubStation Alpha,

SubRip SubRip is a free software program for Microsoft Windows which extracts subtitles and their timings from various video formats to a text file. It is released under the GNU GPL. Its subtitle format's file extension is .srt and is widely supported ...

, SVCD,

Teletext Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipped television sets. Teletext sends data in the broadcast signal, hidden in the invisible vertical blanking interval area at the to ...

Text file A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flat file) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In ope ...

, VobSub, WebVTT, TTML *

Video coding format A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format of digital video content, such as in a data file or bitstream. It typically uses a standardized video compression algorithm, most commonly based on ...

s: Cinepak, Dirac, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, H.265/MPEG HEVC, AV1, HuffYUV, Indeo 3,

MJPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPE ...

MPEG-1 MPEG-1 is a Technical standard, standard for lossy compression of video and Audio frequency, audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively ...

RealVideo RealVideo, also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary format, proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks — the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 15. RealV ...

3&4, Sorenson,

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...

, VP5, VP6,

VP8 VP8 is an open format, open and royalty-free Video coding format, video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a Proprietary software, proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released a ...

, VP9,

DNxHD Avid DNxHD ("Digital Nonlinear Extensible High Definition") is a lossy high-definition video post-production codec developed by Avid for multi-generation compositing with reduced storage and bandwidth requirements. It is an implementation of SMPT ...

, ProRes and some WMV. * Digital Camcorder formats:

MOD and TOD MOD and TOD are recording formats for use in digital tapeless camcorders. The formats are comparable to XDCAM EX, HDV and AVCHD. Overview MOD and TOD are informal names of tapeless video formats used by JVC (MOD and TOD), Panasonic (MOD only) ...

via USB.

Output formats

VLC can

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

audio and video into several formats depending on the operating system, including: * Container formats: ASF, AVI,

, FLV, Fraps,

, MP4, MPJPEG,

( ES,

, PS, PVA,

, TS, WAV,

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by ...

* Audio coding formats:

, AC-3, DV Audio,

* Streaming protocols:

, MMS, RTSP, RTP, UDP * Video coding formats: Dirac, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, H.265/MPEG-H HEVC,

, VP5, VP6,

, VP9

Legality

The VLC media player software installers for the macOS platform and the Windows platform include the libdvdcss DVD decryption library, even though this library may be legally restricted in certain jurisdictions.

India

In May 2022, it was reported by MediaNama that VLC was banned in India and its website was inaccessible from India under the provisions of the

Information Technology Act, 2000 The Information Technology Act, 2000 (also known as ITA-2000, or the IT Act) is an Act of the Indian Parliament (No 21 of 2000) notified on 17 October 2000. It is the primary law in India dealing with cybercrime and electronic commerce. Secon ...

. Neither the developers nor the Indian government offered any explanation to the ban, according to ''

India Today ''India Today'' is a weekly Indian English-language news magazine published by Living Media, Living Media India Limited. It is the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. In 2014, ''India Today'' laun ...

''. The official VideoLAN Twitter account stated in August that the website was blocked in India from 13 February 2022. A report by ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media Limited, an entity controlled by the Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia, the daughter o ...

'' indicated that the ban could be due to links with China. India had in 2020 banned over 200 Chinese apps following the 2020–2022 China–India skirmishes. Another Hindustan Times report from April quoting Symantec said that Chinese hackers were depending on VLC to launch malware they had previously installed on Windows machines. The technique they used is called DLL side-loading, in which an external library that a legitimate program loads at runtime is substituted with a modified version containing the malware. VideoLan president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said that the block was most likely a result of a misunderstanding of the Chinese security issue. In October 2022, VideoLan, with assistance from the Indian digital rights organization

Internet Freedom Foundation Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF)is an Indian Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization dedicated to defending and advancing digital rights. Established in 2016 out of SaveTheInternet.in net neutrality campaign, IFF advocates for free expressi ...

sent a legal notice to the Indian government asking for an explanation for the block order, following which the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology removed the ban in November 2022 without the Indian Government providing any reason as to why it was blocked in the first place.

United States

The VLC media player software is able to read audio and video data from DVDs that incorporate

Content Scramble System The Content Scramble System (CSS) is a digital rights management (DRM) and encryption system employed on many commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around ...

(CSS) encryption, even though the VLC media player software lacks a CSS decryption license. The unauthorized decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content or unauthorized distribution of CSS decryption tools may violate the US

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

. Decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content has been temporarily authorized for certain purposes (such as

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

making that uses short portions of DVD content for criticism or commentary) under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act anticircumvention exemptions that were issued by the US Copyright Office in 2010. However, these exemptions do not change the DMCA's ban on the distribution of CSS decryption tools; including those distributed with VLC.

Explanatory notes

References

External links

* {{FLOSS 2001 software Amiga media players Applications using D-Bus Audio software with JACK support BeOS software BSD software Cross-platform free software Free and open-source Android software Free media players Free video software Linux DVD players Linux media players Lua (programming language)-scriptable software Multimedia frameworks MacOS media players Portable software Software DVD players Software that uses FFmpeg Free software that uses ncurses Software that was ported from wxWidgets to Qt Software using the GNU Lesser General Public License Solaris media players Spoken articles Streaming media systems Streaming software Video software that uses Qt Webcams Windows media players Universal Windows Platform apps Xbox One software Free screencasting software Software Blu-ray players TvOS software