A brand new version of the VLC media player is now available, padded out with a bunch of bug fixes and welcome feature enhancements.
VLC 3.0.7 is the seventh stable release in the VLC 3.x series and feature a number of improvement, including improved MP4 support and better handling of BluRay menus.
Fixes specifically aimed at Android, macOS and Windows also feature, such as UPNP service discovery on MacBook’s with TouchBar and a fix for pass-through on Android.
More general changes include:
- Improved Chromecast support
- Improved Blu-ray support
- Fix for DirectSound drain
- Updated Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Soundcloud scripts
- Improved handling when playing invalid item with loop enabled
There’s also 42 security patches, including fixes for 1 high security issue, and 21 medium security issues. These include issues with buffer overflows, out-of-read violations, and stack overflows.
You can find a complete change log on the Videolan website.
Upgrade to VLC 3.0.7
Looking to upgrade to VLC 3.0.7 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or later? Of course you are, and and the good news is that it’s relatively straightforward to do so.
Unofficial VLC PPA
An unofficial VLC 3.x PPA packages the latest VLC releases for Ubuntu-based Linux distributions (not only builds for 18.04 LTS and above have Chromecast support).
To add the VLC 3 PPA to your Software Sources and install the app run the following commands in a new terminal window (Ctrl + T):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-4
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vlc-3
sudo apt update && sudo apt install vlc
Official VLC Snap App
Fancy a more legit method of getting the latest version?
The recommended way to install VLC on Ubuntu (and other Linux distributions) is to use the VLC Snap app. The VLC Snap is is an official build maintained by Videolan themselves, who say:
“VLC for Ubuntu […] is packaged using Snapcraft. This allows us to distribute latest and greatest VLC versions directly to end users, with security and critical bug fixes, full codec and optical media support. “
If you’re reading from Ubuntu (or a Linux distribution which handles snap:urls) you can hit the orange button below to install the VLC Snap app:
Alternatively, if you prefer doing things via the command line, run:
sudo snap install vlc --classic
That’s it!