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VLC

The cone-shaped player that plays almost any file, with no ads or account.

Instead of Windows Media Player, streaming apps

M · ToolOpen sourceNonprofitNo account

The traffic cone on VLC's icon is a leftover from student life: it refers to cones collected by the networking students' association at École Centrale Paris, where the project began in 1996 as a French academic effort, and the cone survived a redraw in 2005 and is still there. VLC plays nearly every video and audio format on nearly every kind of device, it is open source, a nonprofit has made it since the early 2000s, and it has no ads, no account and no tracking.

VLC scores a 5 on footprint, lock-in, self-direction, longevity and delivery, and there is nothing to install except the player and nothing to pay. What it asks of you is some patience with how it looks, because the design looks dated, and that is the only real complaint we found.

Power is a 4 because a small group steers VLC, so decisions about where it goes next rest with a few people.

Owning it is about as uneventful as software gets. You install it once, open whatever odd file a friend or a camera handed you, and it plays, with no ad in the way and no prompt to make an account.

    What stands out

  • Plays almost any file, on almost any device
  • No ads, no account, no tracking
  • Made by a nonprofit since the early 2000s
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For comparison, we also reviewed YouTube (16/30) as a benchmark.

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