VLC Media Player 3.0.5 is out
VideoLAN released VLC Media Player 3.0.5 to the Stable channel earlier today. The new version of the cross-platform media player is a bug fix update for the most part; it fixes minor security issues by upgrading third-party libraries to newer versions.
VLC users can download the latest version of the media player from the official VideoLAN website; VLC 3.0.5 is available for the desktop operating systems Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and the mobile operating systems Android, iOS, and other systems.
Windows users can run the installer to upgrade existing installations of VLC or download a portable copy from the Windows download page on the project website.
VLC Media Player 3.0.5 is a bug fix release that fixes several issues in the player and updates libraries that the media player uses; these updates include patches for minor security issues according to the changelog.
The new version improves ChromeCast support and updates support for YouTube. While YouTube support is not as good as it is in SMPlayer, another popular player for media files, it is still an integral part of VLC Media Player.
VLC users can select Media > Open Network Stream to play YouTube videos by pasting YouTube video URLs in the location field.
Here is a quick rundown of the most important changes in the release:
- Runtime hardening enabled on Mac OS X devices.
- All external VLC plugins need to be signed with a "DeveloperID certificate" to continue working with VLC on Mac OS.
- Blu-Ray menu and seeking improvements.
- New AV1 decoder based on dav1d library; also AV1 demuxing improvements and AV1 packetizer.
- Libaom decoder enabled by default.
- Hardware decoding disabled on "some" older Intel GPUs.
- Direct3D fixes and improvements.
Closing Words
VLC 3.0.5 is no major update by any stretch but it is still suggested to upgrade older versions of the media player to the new one since it includes updated libraries and other improvements.
Thanks, Martin. I had so much trouble with VLC and YouTube videos that I uninstalled the last version. I will try this version.
I was wrong. This version doesn’t do what I want either. I uninstalled it again.
Use pot player or sm player.
I do use SMPlayer, but thanks for the suggestion.
I gave up on VLC also. PotPlayer does the trick.
Thanks for the comments about SMPlayer. I sometimes use a mouse at some distance from a computer to control video playback. I wanted something that could pause playback with a mouse click anywhere on the screen rather than having to use a keyboard hot key. SMPlayer has many choices to assign to the mouse buttons. I’m surprised that VLC doesn’t have this functionality. SM loads much faster too (on my laptop anyway).
Msi can be found here: http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/3.0.5/win64/
All download versions here : https://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/3.0.5
How long will users have to look at the Santa Claus hat on top of the traffic cone?
The Santa hat goes away on January 1st.
@VioletMoon,
If you like, you can remove/disable the Santa Claus hat.
To do so, go to
Tools\ Preferences\ Show settings\ All\ Interface\ Main interfaces\ Qt\ uncheck the box for “Allow automatic icon changes”, and next save settings.
thanks. odd how that is so hidden
Is this really important….???
llorc
always found this terrible player, there are lighter/as good (better) alternatives out there..
I actually still use MPC-HC, small and plays everything I need…. and there are better ones available.. :)
SMPlayer (the Linux version) is my default video player. It hasn’t failed yet. I keep VLC installed though.
@Gerard:
Ditto for me, currently in Windows but soon in Linux. SMPlayer’s video rendering and stability is *far* superior to VLC’s (on my current hardware, at least). For now, VLC is the default video player on my Android phone, since SMPlayer doesn’t seem to be available for Android.
However, SMPlayer’s playlist management is more primitive than VLC’s. (You can move multiple files up and down together in VLC’s playlist, not just one at a time as in SMPlayer’s.) Also, if you enqueue multiple, individually selected files in SMPlayer in a single operation, it usually adds them to the playlist in random order instead of in ascending filename order … and then you have to reorder them one at a time. Tedious…
At any rate, VLC is still my default audio player. Plus, if I ever run into a video-file format that SMPlayer doesn’t support, maybe VLC will. At this point, I’m only interested in Windows/Linux cross-platform apps, and in the future, I’ll only be interested in Linux apps, so I haven’t considered any other media players that are Windows- or Windows/Mac-only.
Yes, so far, on intel integrated gfx SMP with MPV core has been much better than vlc, but I’ve tried the latest VLC from flathub and it runs very well these days, the only thing that gives me problems is HEVC 12bit or very heavy 1080 videos that would otherwise run better or normally on SMP. Hardware is potato but that’s all the better for testing these things.
You can disable it:
Show settings: All
Preferences (Ctrl + P) -> Interface -> Main interfaces -> Qt -> Allow automatic icon changes
Sequence of events:
* 1. Created System Restore point.
* 2. Updated to 3.0.5
* 3. Tried streaming a few YT videos all of which failed.
* 4. Ran SR to downgrade to 3.0.4
* 5. Can stream YT videos without a problem again.
Maybe the latest version did fix some old bugs, but it seems to have introduced new ones.
Managed to get 3.0.5 up and running by deleting prefs and cache during the uninstall procedure to remove 3.0.4 and then installing the update.
One thing that always bothers me with vlc is having to uncheck all the file extensions except the well known ones such as .wmv, mp4, avi etc., to prevent Windows assigning it to open them. Why anyone would want vlc to open .rar, or zip files for example is mystery.
@TelV: When I’ve run VLC installers, I’m pretty sure I’ve always selected the “quick update” option and I don’t think I’ve ever had to redo VLC’s file associations from scratch. I configured them once, and the configuration stuck through multiple updates. (Well … until I switched to SMPlayer as my default video player. After that, I had to reassign audio files to VLC.) I don’t remember ever being asked to make VLC the default application for RAR and ZIP files. Maybe they were deselected in VLC’s installer because they were already assigned to 7-Zip on my machine. Too far back for me to remember…
@Peterc,
If you click the Custom option before running the installer you’ll see that vlc will assign itself as the default application for every file type including the ones I’ve mentioned.
Here’s an example of what can happen if you just use the quick install method: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=147653
I prefer PotPlayer to VLC.
Lot of customization is possible in PotPlayer
Fully agree.
DingDingDingDing….
…aaaand we have a winner…
I agree also….for me, it’s been a bit of a revelation.
Santa hat? yes … ability to pause by clicking any part of the screen? no ….
There’s a plugin for that: https://github.com/nurupo/vlc-pause-click-plugin
Thanks; I thought I had seen something like that in a web search. At this point, I have no clue how to install a github plugin though. Looks a little complicated as a first impression …
On laptop I set VLC Hotkey Play/Pause to space bar. On tablets I never needed to set anything since two finger tap works.
huh forcing update still shows 3.04 as latest
Is it really out?
I started VLC (v. 3.0.4) and clicked ‘Check for Updates’ under Help. It told me that I have the latest version.
Ran Glary Utilities Software update check — it also said no update was available.
I can’t remember when the “Help -> Check for Updates” ever worked.
As a side note, I never found that “Help -> Check for Updates” worked with LibreOffice either.
@Anonymous:
I’m pretty sure VLC’s internal update-checker *has* worked for me at least once, but I seem to recall I was more than one minor version behind. I think maybe I was avoiding a release that had a security vulnerability or something like that…
I’ve never used LibreOffice’s internal update-checker. I usually find out about LibreOffice updates — the vast majority of application updates, in fact — from SUMo before I learn about them from any other source. (And at least once, recently, SUMo gave me a false positive based on a release candidate, not a final release. But you discover that quickly, when you go to LibreOffice’s download page.) Besides, I like to check file hashes on my downloads, especially big ones, and I don’t know whether the internal updater does that. But you’re right; I’ve read numerous reports that LibreOffice’s internal updater just doesn’t work. LibreOffice *has* automatically alerted me several times to the availability of updated *extensions*. Some of them I’ve had to download and install manually, however. It’s a great program, but it’s not perfect. (And neither is MS Office.)
@dmacleo & @Tim Bonham (any relation to John and Jason?):
VLC Media Player 3.0.5 is available for download on VideoLAN’s various official download pages.
It’s apparently still not showing up in VLC Media Player’s built-in update checker. (I’ve noticed that some applications don’t consistently flag “minor” updates in their built-in checkers, maybe to save on download traffic. And other apps just delay flagging by a few days, maybe to wait and see whether early adopters report problems.)
By the way, 3.0.5 may not show up yet in Glary’s update checker, but it showed up a couple of days ago in SUMo. That’s how I learned about it (and then read the release notes and then installed it). I was still glad to see coverage of it at Ghacks.
Now version 3.0.6 has been released.