VLC has not been updated since summer 2023 on the Play Store. VideoLAN explains in fact that Google imposes conditions on it that it does not like.
VLC is one of the most popular media players. More than 20 years after its creation in France, the VideoLAN association service is still widely used and its logo, a construction cone, has something iconic.
However, if you take a look at the VLC Play Store page, you will undoubtedly notice a problem. The application – which has more than 100 million downloads on the Google platform – has not had any updates since August 27, 2023. That’s a very long time.
A problem of which the VLC teams are aware who have decided to raise it in a publication on Twitter/X.
“If you are wondering why we can’t update VLC on the Android version, it’s because Google refuses to let us update“, we read in the message.
VideoLAN explains that the Mountain View firm imposes conditions to authorize the update of the application. “Either we give them our private signing keys, or we drop support for Android TV below API-30, and all our users on TV API<30 can't get patches“.
Signing keys
So there are two things to understand. Let’s start with signing keys. This is a system used in particular by the Play Store to guarantee the reliability of applications and optimize their distribution. These keys are stored on Google infrastructures and this is undoubtedly why VideoLAN is resisting.
It’s hard to imagine VideoLAN, which has always promoted free software as an alternative to tech giants, completely trusting the ogre Google.
The Android TV problem
The other point of contention concerns Android TV. To understand, you should know that, for security reasons, Google asks developers to ensure that the minimum version of Android on which their apps can run is not too old. We must therefore aim for a certain level of API.
Here, VideoLAN indicates that Google asks it to aim for the API-30 level which corresponds to Android 11. Thus, VLC must aim for at least the version of Android TV based on Android 11. Without meeting this condition, it cannot receive updates via the Play Store, because Google blocks the process.
However, according to VideoLAN, “tens of millions of people use Android TV before Android 11“. All these people would therefore no longer have access to VLC on their television.
It is not known whether the VLC teams are currently negotiating with Google to resolve the situation. However, we now have at least an explanation to understand the lack of updates via the Play Store.