VLC media player blacklists Huawei phones, prevents download of app on P8, P10, P20

tech2 News StaffJul 27, 2018 17:41:07 IST

VLC Media player says that it is blocking some Huawei devices from downloading its Android app from the Google Play Store.

PSA: @HuaweiMobile phones are now blacklisted and cannot get VLC on the Play Store.
Their ridiculous policy of killing all background apps (except their own) breaks VLC audio background playback (of course).
See https://t.co/QzDW7KbV4I and many other reports...@HuaweiFr

— VideoLAN (@videolan) July 25, 2018

The move comes after some newer Huawei were seen directly affecting VLC’s background audio playback feature. This was happening due to Huawei’s aggressive battery management and tendency to kill background apps, which was randomly stopping the audio when playing in the background. Due to the issue, the VLC player’s application started to get various one-star reviews from users, who naturally did not realise that it was, in fact, their phone causing the issue. Even though it is possible to manually disable these battery optimisations and have the app function properly in the background, VLC claims that people often don’t know how to do that, so they blame the app instead.

NB: Please note that this is not for all Huawei phones but just the recent ones. NB2: You can always download the apk from our website. — VideoLAN (@videolan) July 25, 2018

Consequently, the media player has announced that it is ‘blacklisting’ Huawei devices, specifically Huawei P8, P10, and P20, from downloading its app, owing to its “ridiculous” policy. Honor devices are reportedly unaffected by this move.

Although, you can still sideload the APK from their website. You just can’t see it on the Google Play Store.