Huawei Phone Users Can Now Download VLC Player Again After Being Blocked by VideoLAN

The turf war between Huawei and VLC Player parent VideoLAN project has come to an end as Huawei users can now install VLC Player on their smartphones. In July last year, VideoLAN blacklisted Huawei smartphones from getting the VLC app from Google Play. That decision was a result of the background task management process that Huawei follows on its devices. The non-profit organisation called Huawei's process a "ridiculous policy" as it had allegedly restricted VLC's background playback for some users in the past. However, things are now sorted as the VLC app can be downloaded on Huawei phones. VideoLAN has also confirmed the development through a tweet posted on Monday.

As first spotted by AndroidPolice through user reports, VLC Player is now downloadable on Huawei phones directly through Google Play. VideoLAN in its official tweet, while responding to AndroidPolice's story, revealed that the app was available for Huawei phones "for months." However, the non-profit organisation didn't make any formal announcement in the past to confirm the comeback.

"Huawei fixed their firmware a long time ago, and we released the day after the availability," the VideoLAN team wrote in the tweet.

Notably, neither Huawei nor VideoLAN defined what are all the changes with respect to the background task management that have been implemented to resolve the issues with the VLC app.

As we mentioned, VideoLAN last year blacklisted Huawei phones due to the background restriction that affected the experience on the VLC app. "Their ridiculous policy of killing all background apps (except their own) breaks VLC audio background playback (of course)," the entity had said in a tweet.

Multiple users on Google Play had also reported background playback issues with the VLC app and blamed the app developers.

That being said, since the issue between Huawei and VideoLAN has now been resolved, you can now download the VLC Player app on your Huawei phone directly from Google Play.