Brief: The latest major release of VLC is has brought a number of improvements including Chromecast support. Here’s how to install VLC 3 in Ubuntu Linux.
The open source video player VLC 3 has been in the development for several years now. The good news is that the wait is finally over for VLC 3. It is now available to download.
VLC 3.0 Features
Here are some of the main new features coming to VLC 3.0:
- Stream local media to Chromecast
- Allows audio passthrough for HD audio codecs
- Default hardware decoding to play 4k and 8K videos
- Limited 360-degree video and audio support
- HTTP/2 support
- Now uses OpenGL
- Support for network browsing with Samba, FTP/SFTP, NFS, and other protocols
- Autodetect external audio tracks (ac3, m4a, aac, dts…), similar to subtitles
- Adaptive streaming
- Improved support for Wayland
- Support for more codecs
You can find all the changes in VLC 3.0 in the release announcement.
How to install VLC 3.0 on Ubuntu Linux
It’s been some time that VLC 3.0 has been released, it should be available in most Linux distributions. So you should first check in your distribution’s software center and install VLC from there.
You can install either the Snap (the first in the screenshot) or the Apt version (the installed one in the screenshot). Snap has the latest version but it’s slow at startup. Apt is fast while starting the application but might not be the latest version.
Installing VLC on Ubuntu using terminal
There are several command line ways to install the latest release of VLC.
The easiest way is to use Snap package of VLC. Snap is a new ‘universal’ packaging system from Ubuntu. They can be used on any Linux distribution that supports Snap. I recommend reading this article to know about Snap packages in detail.
You can use it alongside your current VLC install. The default channel of VLC snap package uses VLC 3+ stable.
If you are using Ubuntu 16.04 or higher, you should already be able to use Snap packages. All you need to do is to use the command below:
sudo snap install vlcInstall VLC 3 on Ubuntu using PPA
If you don’t want to use Snap package, you can use the stable PPA (if you use an Ubuntu-based distribution).
At present, this PPA will just install (or upgrade to) latest stable VLC release.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlcInstall VLC 4.0 in Ubuntu right now (highly unstable and not recommended at all)
The work on VLC 4.0 has already started. I won’t recommend using it unless you have strong reasons to try out the unstable release.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/master-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlcI also recommend reading this article about removing PPA so that you can uninstall the applications installed using a PPA.
What say?
I hope this quick tutorial helped you to install the latest
What about you? Are you looking forward to VLC 3.0?
when using Ubuntu and reading news articles, it won’t allow videos to play. I downloaded VLC. Is there a next step because it is still won’t allow play.
Maybe you need to download media codecs to play certain kind of files.
I wanted to use the stable ppa release but when I ran ‘sudo apt update’ It brings an error ‘404 not found’. So I removed the ppa and installed via apt.
Hope there is a fix to the problem.
Thanks for the info. I had “lost” access to ‘vlc’ although Package Manager said it was there. Duh!
Used your command and vlc was accessible via ‘menu’ and ‘right click’ a file as it should have been.
It doesn’t WORK , Ubuntu is a night mare ,I can’t install VLC to watch live streaming ,been trying for days , I have No password ! Why make it so dam difficult for ordinary people I am not a computer Technician , grrrr
What password are you talking about? If you try to install any application from software center, you’ll have to use the computer password (the one you use to log in to your system).
Yikes , VLC is asking for a password ,do not have it, :(
Password is your LOG IN password. If you do not have one, just hit Enter/Return. BTW, which version of Ubuntu are you using?