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VLC crosses 7 billion downloads
submitted by
Nemeskihttps://techcrunch.com/2026/08/31/vlc-crosses-7-billion-downloads/
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After all these years, I still smile when I see the annual Santa hat logo change. 😅
At least 200 of the reported downloads are just me 😅
Reminder that VLC has been to the moon and back.
WHY IS THIS MY FIRST TIME LEARNING ABOUT THIS‽
Hells yeah! Awesome!
This means that technically VLC has been the furthest from the earth any human as been.
The creator of VLC has been offered MILLIONS to put ads in VLC, and he’s turned them down every time.
So we can now say everybody and their mom uses VLC? (There’s also a lot of unreported downloads from distro package caches and unofficial mirrors)
Most users have no idea that it’s much more than a video player. The interface is sofa king bad for anything BUT video playing.
Even just playing videos, it doesn’t have reverse step frame-by-frame, because they outright refuse to implement it, even though other players have had it for many years without any problems.
that’s annoyed me a time or twelve, too. whenever i want to look that close at something specific, i just load the video in avidemux
SEveral hundred of those are mine.
VLC good, but mpv peak.
oh, there’s plenty of better alternatives, but VLC’s been certifiably “good enough” for 25+ years.
If I have issues with VLC, my go-to alternative is ffplay
Depends™ I have seen plenty of videos that had problems on mpv but ran perfectly fine on VLC and vice versa.
VLC is slow and clunky. It’s pretty outdated. mpv is fast and extensible, it’s a good replacement. Of course, good to have both around for situations like you described.
mpv’s default UI isn’t particularly intuitive, VLC ‘s is
There’s many mpv frontends to choose from. It’s a command line tool by default, certainly poweruser focused in it’s default form.
this doesnt even include the couple of hundred downloads from linux repos, flathub and snap store
Tbh I don’t use it every day. But also tbh, if something doesn’t play in another player, I know it will play in VLC. Mad respect.
This is a meaningless metric: lots of people probably got it from sources they have no way of tracking (e.g. distro repos), others may be crawlers, etc. etc.
VLC, you guys absolutely rock
Beautiful. All these people, using it to watch their totally legal downloaded videos. Arrrg!
I use mpv btw
…and the other billion people on the planet hate computers.
I’ve used vlc since the stone ages. However recently (on mint) it’s been opening two windows, one for the video and one for the player. Doesn’t matter which boxes I click in the settings. Super annoying
try the ‘reset preferences’ button in settings.
Oh it’s been tried, ty tho
Use Celluloid
VLC 3.0 when
It was 3.0 right? Wayland and HDR and all the other stuff that is in MPV since forever? I use Haruna btw
Cool, still waiting for them to fix the excessive startup delay that’s been there for months, and wasnt there before the latest update.
And it still doesnt work with blu-rays, irregardless of how many addons and libraries I jam into it.
Free doesnt always mean better.
The slow startup is an issue with windows . not vlcs fault.
https://github.com/videolan/vlc#contributions