The Android version, like its desktop sibling, is completely free and open source. No in-app purchases. No telemetry phoning home. It’s funded by donations and volunteer developers. That’s increasingly rare.

VLC for Android has a full-featured audio player with a 10-band equalizer, playback speed control, crossfade, and gapless playback. It handles FLAC, ALAC, Opus, and even ancient formats like MIDI and CUE sheets. If you have a large offline music collection, VLC is lighter and faster than many dedicated music apps.

You can tap Browse → Local Network and stream movies directly from a Windows share (SMB), a NAS drive, an FTP server, or even a webdav folder. No need to download files to your phone first. It also plays network streams by typing a URL (e.g., an IP camera feed or an online radio stream).