VLC comes back to iOS devices after two long years

VideoLAN has some good news for iOS users. VLC Player has made a much-awaited comeback into the App Store for iOS devices late last week along with a strong sync feature.

VLC had been pulled from the App Store back in 2011 amidst much drama. The grouse was between VLC’s open source licensing and DRM restrictions on apps downloaded by the App stores. Strangely enough, the issue arose due to a complaint of infringement from the VLC Developers and not Apple. The app was pulled thanks to the conflict of the App Store with various parts of the GPL license it was released under.

The application, version 2.0, is now back on the iOS App Store. “We worked hard with all major copyright holders to not repeat history and we are confident to have achieved this goal,” VideoLAN said in a statement.

Finally back!

VLC for iOS is not a rehashed version of the previous player, but has been built from the ground up. The app plays all files, in all formats, including MKV, quite like the desktop-based VLC Media Player.

VideoLAN has said that the app will work on any device running iOS 5.1 or later and is compatible with any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. There is a slight problem, though. You may notice that VLC considerably slows down while trying to play a video recorded on the iPhone 5. The VLC team has admitted to MacStories that the playback is slowed down since third-party video players cannot use the DSP (hardware acceleration unit) included within iOS devices unless they use the MediaPlayer framework.

VLC for iOS now also comes with a better way to sync media onto your iOS devices. You can now upload using Wi-Fi, have your Dropbox account integrated with your device, directly download from the web, use iTunes as well as have an optional passcode lock.

You can grab hold of the open-source VLC for iOS from the App Store.