VLC it is one of the best apps to watch movies and series on Android tablets and iPad and one of its virtues is that it has a use of the most simple and intuitiveBut that's precisely why we may never have felt the need to fiddle with settings and preferences too much, or perhaps we are now giving it a first chance. We review everything you need to know.
Choose the way to control the player that we like the most
It seems to us that the controls by gestures de VLC They are probably the best option, because they are very easy to use (slide vertically on the left side of the screen to increase and decrease the brightness, on the right the volume and horizontally to go forward or backward) and are enabled by default, but if it bothers us because we accidentally touch the screen a lot, we have an icon with a padlock that blocks it or we can get rid of them in the "preferences"From the menu, in"extra preferences", picking out "interface”And going to controls.
If we are going to use the icons, we may miss the botones to rewind and go forward, which are disabled by default and which we can also activate in the "interface”. In that same menu we have a very interesting option in case we have our device connected to a tv or if we have a keyboard or a remote attached, and we don't want to use the touch controls: we just have to go to "Android TV interface”And enable this option, close the app and reopen it.
Use a dark mode also on Android
We can switch to the Android TV interface simply because we like the format more, although it will not be the best option for smaller screens, but on a tablet of a certain size we may find the user experience interesting, although this is something that is totally up to the consumer's taste.
One of the things that can attract us in this way is for example the dark tone of the interface, but we must remember that we can activate a dark mode directly, without changing the format. It is another of the options that we have in the "interface" section, although only for Android users, of course, since in iOS is used by default.
More playback options
VLC can also boast of being one of the first applications to be updated to support the new PIP de Android O and testing it is extremely simple, because it has a shortcut in the playback menu (the screen with another screen inside). All we have to do is make sure we have the background playback activated, which is one of the first options that appears in the «preferences«.
It is also worth remembering that we can open a video and choose to play it only as audio (in addition to specific files of this type), for which all we have to do is press and hold on the video in question and choose the corresponding option. When we reproduce audio, in general, we will open a small menu in the style of audio players with the usual buttons, but you already know that we can also use the gesture controls if we expand it.
Manage subtitles
VLC It is also a great option if we want to see movies in the original version and we need subtitles, especially on Android, where we can add them directly from the corresponding menu (the icon to the left of the play) and for some time now we have also had the option to download them directly from the internet. If what we want is to increase the size, change the font or the color, we have to go back to the menu "preferences"And enter"interface".
En iOS We are a little more limited because we cannot directly add a subtitle, but only choose between the tracks with which the app automatically recognizes, for which we must remember that it is essential that they have the same name as the video file. We do have all the other options, in any case, to change the format, directly in the "preferences" menu.
Some extra options for iOS
Although we are not going to be able to enjoy some of the functions that we have highlighted for Android yet on our iPad, in compensation there are a couple of interesting functions to take into account if we use VLC on iOS. The first is that we can put a password (in case we want to prevent, for example, children from accessing our videos) for which we only have to go to the «preferences«. The second, which is much more visible and surely you have not gone unnoticed, is that we can play our videos directly from our service cloud storage preferred.