The highly applauded VLC media player has finally made its way to Google’s Chrome OS, the non-profit VideoLAN organization announced on Friday. The new Chrome OS iteration of VLC works just like its PC counterpart, as it supports all audio and video formats along with network streams and DVD/ISOs. Other features include support for subtitles, playlists along with an audio equalizer.
“VLC is intended for everyone, is totally free, has no ads, no in-app purchases, no spying and is developed by passionate volunteers,” VideoLAN President Jean-Baptiste Kempf wrote in a blog post. “All the source code is available for free.”
VLC for Chrome OS is essentially a port of its Android version. It was Google’s App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) that made it all possible, as it allows developers to work Android apps on Chrome OS and other platforms. The VideoLAN team says it was able to “recycle 95 percent of the Android code and optimizations” it utilizes in its existing Android app. As we are all aware by now, Chrome and Chrome OS are not the same. As ARC is only for Chrome OS, this will not work on the desktop versions of Chrome, adds Kempf.
To recall, VLC was initially demoed on the OS back in March which makes it’s rather surprising it took nine more months for the app before the app finally launches. For now, the latest version of the app has only been tested on Chromebook Pixel and HP Chromebook 14. Hence, VLC has warned that there will be a slew of bugs in the initial version. Interested users can download VLC media player for Chrome OS via the Chrome Web Store.
VLC for Chrome OS is a free and open source just like any other VideoLAN release. Its source code gets licensed under the GPL, which is currently being rolled out as GPLv3, just like VLC for Android.
