Description
VLC is a free, open-source media player that plays almost every video and audio file, DVDs and online streams without extra codec packs, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and more. It is an alternative to paid video players and to codec packs full of adware.
It began in 1996 as a student project at the École Centrale Paris and became open source in 2001 under the GPL. Since 2009 it has been developed by VideoLAN, a French non-profit association (loi 1901) chaired by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, with volunteer developers from many countries; it is funded by individual donations. The site promises no spyware, no ads and no user tracking. By January 2025 VLC had been downloaded more than six billion times; the current desktop version in November 2026 was 3.0.24, and VLC 4 was shown in a preview at CES 2026.
Besides playing files, VLC converts formats, extracts the sound from a video and can often play incomplete or damaged files. It reads encrypted DVDs through the libdvdcss library, which is legally contested and left out of some Linux distributions. In January 2025 VideoLAN demonstrated automatic, offline AI subtitles and translation. The European Parliament funded a bug bounty for VLC in 2017. Fake sites copy VLC to spread malware, so it should be downloaded only from videolan.org.
Strengths
- Opens nearly every common format, DVDs and streams with nothing else to install.
- Free, without ads, tracking or account, on computers, phones and TV boxes.
- Developed by a non-profit association for almost 30 years, with regular security updates.
Weaknesses
- Commercial Blu-ray discs usually don’t play without extra keys.
- Fake download sites imitate it, so the source has to be videolan.org.
- The advanced settings are dense for beginners, and the long-announced VLC 4 was still unreleased in November 2026.
Who it is for
Anyone who wants to watch a downloaded film, a phone video or a DVD on any computer without hunting for codecs or paying for software.
Sources
- VideoLAN: about, VLC, checked November 2026
- Wikipedia: VLC media player, Wikipédia: VideoLAN