In this guide, I will show you a step by step method to install VLC Media Player on Firestick. The method demonstrated here also works on Firestick 4k, Fire TV, and Fire TV Cube. VLC Media Player is arguably the most popular multimedia playback software on a wide range of devices.
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Born as an academic project in 1996, it quickly became the multimedia player we know now, thanks to its collaborators from all over the world. It supports all major video and audio formats and applies different streaming protocols for IPTV.
The VLC media player has built a reputation among streaming enthusiasts due to its exceptional modularity and hardware compatibility. Whether it’s a low-power chipset or a powerful processor, the hardware decoder used by VLC can work with a wide range of hardware.
Entry-level streaming devices like Amazon’s Firestick, Fire TV, and Fire TV Cube can deliver smooth, stutter-free HQ video playback with VLC. In case you want to play a corrupted video or audio file, VLC can do it.
Features of VLC on Firestick
- VLC for Fire TV can play all kinds of video formats, including MP4, MKV, WEBM, AVI, AVC, XVID, and many more.
- You can also listen to audio files in different formats. Some of the formats include MP3, AC3, WMA, FLAC, Vorbis, DTS, and others.
- VLC also has built-in subtitle support and is compatible with DVD, TXT, VTT, SubRip, WebVTT, etc.
- With VLC, you can play video files up to 4K resolution with multi-channel lossless audio. (4K playback is only available on Firestick 4K)
- It has advanced playback controls and multimedia tools, such as equalizer, audio passthrough control, audio-video adjustments, and synchronization offset.
- It supports both hardware and software decoding.
- The app is open source and can be downloaded for free. In-app ads are totally absent.
How to download and install VLC for Fire Stick, Fire TV, and Fire TV Cube
To install VLC Media Player on Firestick, please follow the steps below.
- Go to the search menu from the Fire TV home screen. It’s indicated by a magnifying glass icon next to the Home tab at the top.
- Use the on-screen keyboard to type “VLC”. Several search suggestions should appear below.
- Select VLC for Fire from the suggestions, then click on the famous VLC traffic cone logo in Apps & Games
- On the download page, click Get/Download under the app description. The download should start shortly.
- Once the installation is complete, click Open to launch the app.
How to use VLC Media Player on Firestick (short tour)
Launching VLC for the first time will prompt users to click Allow to grant app storage permissions. Next, you should see the app’s default home screen.
The main screen consists mainly of tile-based categories on the right. The quick access menu on the left includes Video, Audio, Navigation, and More.
There is only an “All Videos” pane in the Videos section and sometimes it shows recently played files. The Audio section is divided into four different categories- Artists, Albums, Genres and Tracks.
From the Navigation section, we can select a multimedia file to play from the internal memory or from the local network. You can also enter a network address in the Stream option to start a live stream.
The More section basically includes the Settings option and app information.
You can access both advanced options from Settings. Selecting the directories to include in the media library or enabling the automatic rescan at startup can be done from the media library settings. You can change the hardware acceleration mode from the video settings. It is recommended to leave it on Automatic.
In the Extra Settings section in the Settings menu, we find more settings related to Video, Audio, Subtitles and Interface. From here, you can make more refined changes based on your preferences. Things like audio passthrough and output settings are found in Audio. From Subtitles you can change the size, color of the subtitles, add a background and more.
If you want to clear your playback history or quickly restart the app, go to Advanced in the Extra Settings section in the Settings menu.
While playing a video file, the floating playback controls window offers Play / Pause and Rewind / Forward functionality, with an aspect switch and quick access menu to change audio tracks and subtitles.
Read also- How to install and watch DAZN on Fire Stick
Conclusion
In this article, we have shown how to download and install VLC for Fire Stick, Fire TV, and Fire TV Cube and briefly discussed its features. The included installation guide and app overview should be enough to help you install and use VLC on Firestick. If you have any problems, feel free to leave your questions in the comments. We will get back to you as soon as possible with a solution.
