VLC Beta for Android brings new material design to the app

A few years ago, one of the most requested apps by Android users was VLC. The immensely popular video player for Windows finally released on Android, and over the years, besides bringing performance and compatibility updates to the App, not a lot has changed, until now.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf, President and one of the lead developers at Videolan shared some major updates that are on their way to VLC. The team has released VLC Beta 3.3.0 which incorporates a number of new changes. First off, the biggest change to the app comes in terms of its user interface. VLC has finally switched over the cleaner Material Design language defined by Google, bringing the app’s visuals more in line with the current versions of stock Android. Additionally, the navigation bar has moved to the bottom to be easier to use. While Videolan has removed the fully coloured toolbars in VLC 3.3.0, they have retained the orange colour in order to retain the company branding.

The app is currently in beta and users will need to sign up for it through the beta program on Play Store. If you don’t want to go through the process, you can always get the app off of APKMirror and sideload it. We wouldn’t recommend advising using a beta version of any app, due to compatibility or functional issues. There is a whole Reddit thread full of discussions about things that are nice about the new changes and the things that the developers have so far got wrong. There are some options that have been clubbed into unrelated menu items, which can be annoying. There is no expected timeline for when VLC 3.3.0 will come out of beta. Currently, the build still needs plenty of work, so we recommend waiting before upgrading.