VLC, the free media player developed by the non-profit VideoLAN, has passed 7 billion downloads across all platforms. TechCrunch reports the figure, citing an email from Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president and lead developer of the project.
The project passed the previous mark of 6 billion downloads in January 2025. That means VLC added its seventh billion in a little over 18 months.
The player remains popular even as streaming services dominate video. It is distributed free of charge and works offline. Streaming keeps expanding on other fronts as well, and Sony recently rolled out free live TV on the PS5 with more than 100 channels.
VLC was recently ported to Amazon Vega, a new operating system for TVs. VideoLAN is also working on support for other platforms and codecs. Work on VLC 4 is under way, but a project of this scale takes time.
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In 2025 the developers said the player would eventually get automatic translation and subtitle generation. Those features are meant to run on local AI models.
