Play nearly all file types on your iOS device

Transfer and play nearly all file types on your iOS device

At some point you may have found yourself wanting to play a music or video file on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch only to discover that it’s format isn’t directly supported by iOS.

In order to get it to work, the video/music file must be converted to an Apple supported format (AAC, .m4v, .mp4, or .mov), and then transferred to the iOS device.

This often isn’t an ideal solution.  Transcoding video from one format to another can take hours, depending on your computer and the number of files requiring conversion.  Transferring them using the iTunes interface is also cumbersome, and in some instances, simply doesn’t work.

The simplest solution is to provide your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with the ability to play other common file formats.

There are many apps in the App Store that provide this kind of functionality, but many of them:

• Are not free
• Only address a few file formats (ie .wmv, .avi only)
• Have ads
• Don’t work as advertised
• Don’t provide transfer functionality so that you can easily get the files onto your device

VLC for iOS permits you to transfer and play nearly all file types on your iOS device.

• Free
• Supports nearly every file format on the planet:
  • 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, MIDI, MP4, Ogg, OGM, WAV, AIFF, Raw audio, MKV, Cinepak, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4, AVC, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, XM, FLAC, MP3, RealAudio, Vorbis, WMA
• No ads
• Works great
• Provides seamless transfer functionality

1.Find VLC for iOS in the App Store

You can download VLC for iOS from the App Store here: VLC for iOS by VideoLAN

Or, you can simply search the App Store from your mobile iOS device.

VLC for iOS inside App Store

2. Install VLC for iOS on your mobile iOS device

Installing VLC for iOS from App Store

Downloading VLC for iOS from App Store

3. Connect your mobile device to your Mac or PC and open iTunes – select your device

iTunes interface – device selection

4. Select the Apps tab and scroll down to the File Sharing section – select VLC

iTunes – Device Apps Section – File Sharing

5. Add your desired files to the VLC Documents

Browse to a location on your computer where your music or video files are stored.  Add as many as you can fit onto your device!

Adding VLC Documents

6. Play your files

Your files are now available in the VLC media library on your device.

VLC for iOS app screen

Side note:

It’s worth noting that your iOS device will consider all files inside the VLC library as App data.  So, as you add music or video files, don’t expect those areas of storage to increase.  If you transfer 5GB of movies to your device, you’ll see your App storage increase by 5GB.

VLC Documents show inside Apps storage