VLC has banned Huawei devices from downloading its app from the Play Store

VLC has banned Huawei devices from downloading its app from the Play Store, because of aggressive background app killing in EMUI. No, this is not a joke.

Apparently the RAM cleaning in Huawei’s custom version of Android, aka, EMUI, is extremely annoying. It closes apps running in the background, and VLC media player is one of the affected apps.

The reason why VideoLAN, is angry with the Chinese company is because VLC users also use the app for listening to music in the background, and EMUI prevents the app from running continuously. This will annoy the user for sure, which is why VLC has banned Huawei devices from downloading its app.

So, can users with a Huawei or Honor device not be able to download VLC? You can still download the APK from the official website, and install it on your device.

VLC has banned Huawei devices from downloading the app. But is this a good idea?

I completely agree that Huawei needs to work on the RAM management, and I do support the fact that VLC has dragged EMUI into the spotlight.

But, as much as I don’t want to support Huawei, VLC’s move could have significant impacts, and not in a good way. By blocking the devices from downloading the app, VLC may have very well given rival media players a chance to gain a large user base.

Also, VLC seems to have ignored the fact that the average user does not how to download and install APKs. You and I may know how to, people new to Android, and senior users may not. So, instead of a good app like VLC, these people could end up downloading an ad-ridden media player from the Play store.

Installing apps from 3rd-party sources, requires a security setting in Android, to be disabled. This puts the device at risk of malware, especially at a time when users get random texts, emails with malicious links.

Another reason why I don’t like that VLC has banned Huawei devices, is because users have to resort to installing the app manually. Downloading mobile apps from 3rd-party servers, and by that I mean non Google-Play servers, is risky. Even Google advises against this. And for good reason, because a skilled hacker could easily replace an official APK, with a malicious one, which could result in chaos.

That being said, VLC has long been serving downloads on its webpage for nearly two decades. So, you can trust them, but the average user doesn’t know all this. VLC says Huawei has responded to the criticism, and we hope that they can sort out the issue soon.