VLC media player
VLC media player, sometimes abbreviated as VMP, is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.
VLC supports many audio- and video-compression methods and file formats, including DVD-Video, Video CD, and streaming-protocols. It is able to stream media over computer networks and can transcode multimedia files.
The default distribution of VLC includes many free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. The libavcodec library from the FFmpeg 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 and macOS by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library; however, this library is legally controversial and is not included in many software repositories of Linux distributions as a result.
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 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, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by VideoLAN, a non-profit organization. Rewritten from scratch in 1998, it was released under GNU General Public License on February 1, 2001, with authorization from the headmaster of the École Centrale Paris. The functionality of the server-program, VideoLan Server, 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 cones 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 reasons, not to upgrade to the just-released GPLv3. 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 Google Play store since 2011. In September 2010, a company named "Applidium" developed a VLC port for iOS 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 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 license compatibility, for instance with the Apple App Store. In July 2013 the VLC application could be resubmitted to the iOS App Store 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 was released on March 13, 2014. Support for Windows RT, Windows Phone and Xbox One were added later. VLC was the third in the SourceForge overall download count.
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 output support, 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 approved a budget that funds a bug bounty program 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 and subtitling in the software and announced that it had reached more than 6 billion downloads.
Release history
Starting with version 1.1.0, VLC release codenames refer to characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld 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.| Version | Codename | Release date |
| 1.0.0 | Goldeneye | 2009-07-07 |
| 1.0.1 | Goldeneye | 2009-07-28 |
| 1.0.2 | Goldeneye | 2009-09-22 |
| 1.0.3 | Goldeneye | 2009-10-31 |
| 1.0.4 | Goldeneye | 2009-12-10 |
| 1.0.5 | Goldeneye | 2010-01-31 |
| 1.0.6 | Goldeneye | 2010-04-21 |
| 1.1.0 | The Luggage | 2010-06-22 |
| 1.1.1 | The Luggage | 2010-07-21 |
| 1.1.2 | The Luggage | 2010-07-29 |
| 1.1.3 | The Luggage | 2010-08-18 |
| 1.1.4 | The Luggage | 2010-08-27 |
| 1.1.5 | The Luggage | 2010-11-13 |
| 1.1.6 | The Luggage | 2011-01-23 |
| 1.1.7 | The Luggage | 2011-02-01 |
| 1.1.8 | The Luggage | 2011-03-23 |
| 1.1.9 | The Luggage | 2011-04-12 |
| 1.1.10 | The Luggage | 2011-06-06 |
| 1.1.11 | The Luggage | 2011-07-15 |
| 1.1.12 | The Luggage | 2011-10-06 |
| 1.1.13 | The Luggage | 2011-12-20 |
| 2.0.0 | Twoflower | 2012-02-18 |
| 2.0.1 | Twoflower | 2012-03-19 |
| 2.0.2 | Twoflower | 2012-07-01 |
| 2.0.3 | Twoflower | 2012-07-19 |
| 2.0.4 | Twoflower | 2012-10-18 |
| 2.0.5 | Twoflower | 2012-12-15 |
| 2.0.6 | Twoflower | 2013-04-11 |
| 2.0.7 | Twoflower | 2013-06-10 |
| 2.0.8 | Twoflower | 2013-07-29 |
| 2.0.9 | Twoflower | 2013-11-05 |
| 2.0.10 | Twoflower | 2014-02-21 |
| 2.1.0 | Rincewind | 2013-09-26 |
| 2.1.1 | Rincewind | 2013-11-14 |
| 2.1.2 | Rincewind | 2013-12-10 |
| 2.1.3 | Rincewind | 2014-02-04 |
| 2.1.4 | Rincewind | 2014-02-21 |
| 2.1.5 | Rincewind | 2014-07-26 |
| 2.2.0 | Weatherwax | 2015-02-27 |
| 2.2.1 | Terry Pratchett | 2015-04-16 |
| 2.2.2 | Weatherwax | 2016-02-06 |
| 2.2.3 | Weatherwax | 2016-05-03 |
| 2.2.4 | Weatherwax | 2016-06-05 |
| 2.2.5.1 | Weatherwax | 2017-05-12 |
| 2.2.6 | Weatherwax | 2017-05-24 |
| 2.2.7 | Weatherwax | 2017-11-21 |
| 2.2.8 | Weatherwax | 2017-12-05 |
| 3.0.0 | Vetinari | 2018-02-09 |
| 3.0.1 | Vetinari | 2018-02-28 |
| 3.0.2 | Vetinari | 2018-04-23 |
| 3.0.3 | Vetinari | 2018-05-29 |
| 3.0.4 | Vetinari | 2018-08-31 |
| 3.0.5 | Vetinari | 2018-12-27 |
| 3.0.6 | Vetinari | 2019-01-10 |
| 3.0.7 | Vetinari | 2019-06-07 |
| 3.0.8 | Vetinari | 2019-08-19 |
| 3.0.10 | Vetinari | 2020-04-28 |
| 3.0.11 | Vetinari | 2020-06-16 |
| 3.0.11.1 | Vetinari | 2020-07-29 |
| 3.0.12 | Vetinari | 2021-01-18 |
| 3.0.13 | Vetinari | 2021-05-10 |
| 3.0.14 | Vetinari | 2021-05-11 |
| 3.0.16 | Vetinari | 2021-06-21 |
| 3.0.17 | Vetinari | 2022-04-19 |
| 3.0.18 | Vetinari | 2022-11-29 |
| 3.0.19 | Vetinari | 2023-09-30 |
| 3.0.20 | Vetinari | 2023-11-01 |
| 3.0.21 | Vetinari | 2024-06-05 |
| 4.0.x | Otto Chriek |