VLC is one of those applications with really humble origins managed to become the main reference in its field. So when we find a video file that we cannot open in any other way, the common thing is to resort to this application, because in this sense we can say that it can do everything. Actually, I personally have it on the list of applications that I always install on a new system or after formatting.

Much of its popularity comes from the golden age of downloading, a time before the advent of streaming platforms, when the first (and in many cases the only) way to watch a movie or series was to resort to knowing which sites and apps. At the time, it was common to download files in thousands of different formats, and under those circumstances, VLC was the safest bet to see them without any problems.

Although rising prices and increasing restrictions on streaming platforms already mean that everything points to a resurgence in downloads, the truth is that there have been important changes in content consumption patterns, resulting in many users (and especially the youngest for whom streaming is a natural method content consumption) VLC is not that popular anymore (although here we still think he’s worth his weight in gold) and that we meet more and more people who don’t know him.

Of course, the people in charge are aware of this new reality and are already working to adapt to this time. Lowpass published an interview with Jean-Baptiste Kempf, President of Videolan, in which we can see this The future of VLC is click and see and streaming although, of course, without giving up what has defined the software so far. A change that, in equal parts, consists of reinventing its interface and adding new features.

The first part is closer than the second, and if we download the nightly build, which is theoretically what awaits us with the arrival of VLC 4.0, we see that the current plans include making the first thing that shows up when the application is opened, be it the catalog of multimedia content that we have on our computer and which we have added to this section. Here, depending on the selected tab, we can see either individual media or playlists that we have created. You can see it in the image above, although I did some tests, I wasn’t able to add media or lists, which tells us that there is still a lot of work to do.

On the other hand, and although it is still being studied, They are also considering bringing streaming services to VLCand we understand that they would be integrated both in the main media view and in the “Discover” tab, which is also already shown in the development version, but whose elements are also not functional as of today. Nothing is certain at this point, but it seems like a pretty logical progression, especially if the reasons that made him an absolute legend don’t get lost along the way.