VLC media player 4+

Easier to navigate than default Music app

A great music player, once you work out how to get your songs into it.

The way it sorts music is great. You can view all your songs from a particular artist, which you can’t do in the default Music app, and the UI is clear and straightforward.

The instructions for getting music into the app weren’t very clear (you have to either use one of the options in the “Network” tab, or plug your iPhone into your computer and copy and paste songs into the “VLC” folder on the iPhone). Rewording the content in the “Learn more” screen with some concrete instructions on what to do and where the settings are would have been very useful.

Once your music is in, the app even supports Chromecasting and has several customisation options. It looks surprisingly good, especially in dark mode.

I do agree with another user though that the swipe to change volume by default feels counter-intuitive, as I usually associate that gesture with closing a panel.

Overall, am really glad I’ve switched to VLC. It’s a great music player and it means I’m no longer tied to using Apple Music on my computer to manage my music.

Was great now a buggy mess

I have been using this got around a year and while it worked great back then now it’s a problem. Tap the app 10 times and it quits and resets. Listen to tracks and the app quits for no reason. I listen to my DJ sets on this but now it’s stopped playing them and quits to reset meaning you can’t listen from where it quits. Also the artwork features buggy and doesn’t recognise artwork or just repeats other album artwork instead. It started quitting randomly after an update to iOS a year ago and it’s gotten worse now with more subsequent iOS updates. I don’t think this app gets updated anymore to iron the kinks out caused by iOS updates. It’s a really a shame cos it worked great once now you get frustrating bugs and random quits and ten taps = quit app. I am going to have to look for another free player to use now.

Update recently fixed some bugs but the app still quits and reset during playback. Frustrating.

Developer Response ,

This is not normal. Does VLC quit when the app is in the background or the screen is locked?

Great app but has an issue

Every time I lock my phone (I recently got the iPhone 13) and when the track is finished the music notification goes away every time, even when I'm on the loop or loop playlist so I always have to go into the app to change the song. Please fix this, it worked perfectly fine on my iPhone 11 and I've tried deleting the app and re-downloading it and it didn't help anything. So please improve on this please because I really want to go back to using this app while sleeping and going out and not hav to be on my phone all the time while walking. Also make it so it doesn't randomly pause either (unless it's something to do with my phone but. I don't k ow. Thanks!