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Freedom251 › Blog › Android

I Wanted YouTube’s Simplicity in VLC — So I Built My Own Media Player

By Freedom251 Team · · 3 min read

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Simple YT Style Player is a local-file media player built around one goal: keep the advanced playback controls people expect from VLC, but make them faster to reach. Its developer, Akshay Jatin Solanki, describes it in a DEV Community article dated October 1, 2026. It plays files already stored on your device. It is not a YouTube or online-video client.

Why the project exists

Solanki says he relies on VLC because it plays almost anything, but its interface gets in the way of simple tasks. His stated question was, “What if VLC had a cleaner, more YouTube-like interface?” His design rationale is that the goal was never to remove functionality. In his words, “The idea was not to remove functionality — it was to make the functionality easier to reach.”

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The clearest example in the article is a long MKV file with several audio languages and embedded subtitles. The workflow he describes is to open the file, pick the audio or subtitle track from an on-screen control, and then use playback and touch controls without digging through traditional player menus. Because the embedded tracks are exposed directly, he does not need separate subtitle files.

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Features the author reports

The article lists the following capabilities. These are the author’s own product claims; they are described here as reported, not as tested behavior.

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  • Formats: MKV, MP4, WebM, AVI, MOV, and other formats, decoded through FFmpeg.
  • Tracks and subtitles: switching among multiple audio tracks and reading embedded subtitles.
  • Playback: speed from 0.25× to 2×, configurable skip intervals, looping, and resume from where you stopped.
  • Navigation: touch scrubbing and hour-aware timestamps, so long films display times in the hours:minutes:seconds form.
  • Display and audio: aspect-ratio controls, rotation, brightness adjustment, volume up to 200%, an audio visualizer, and picture-in-picture.
  • Desktop extras: file associations, auto-hiding controls, high-DPI support, and keyboard shortcuts.

Platform targets and availability

The article names two release targets. The table below compares them using the author’s stated details.

Platform Stated target How video is decoded Platform-specific notes
Windows Windows 10/11, 64-bit FFmpeg sidecar processes File associations, auto-hiding controls, high-DPI support, keyboard shortcuts
Android Android 8.0 or later, arm64 FFmpegKit running in-process through JNI Touch-based controls, including scrubbing; local files are reached through a loopback HTTP connection (see below)

The article describes the project as open source under the MIT license and points readers to GitHub releases. Neither the primary repository nor a current release page could be checked for this report, so the version number and download availability cannot be confirmed here. Check the project’s GitHub releases page directly before installing, and confirm that the build’s version matches the platform targets above.

How the app is built

The interface and logic are shared. Both platforms use vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript inside a Tauri 2 shell, and Rust handles the core media operations. Solanki says the project began as an Electron and HTML Windows application and was later rebuilt on Tauri 2 to add Android.

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Windows: sidecar FFmpeg processes

On Windows, the article says playback runs through FFmpeg sidecar processes, meaning separate helper programs launched alongside the app rather than code linked into it.

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Android: reaching local files through loopback HTTP

Android is the more unusual part of the design. The article explains the problem: the file picker returns a content:// URI, and the WebView cannot use that as an ordinary local-file path. The reported workaround runs in four steps:

  1. The user selects a video with the system file picker, which returns a content:// URI.
  2. The app resolves that URI to the underlying file.
  3. The app serves the file over a local loopback HTTP connection, so it is reachable only from the device itself.
  4. The playback engine requests byte ranges from that connection, which lets it seek and buffer without reading the whole file first.

This is the approach the author reports. It explains why seeking can depend on the engine’s byte-range support, and it is a useful reference if you are building a similar player.

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Who should consider it

  • A good fit: you play local files with several audio languages or embedded subtitles and find traditional player menus slow to use, especially on a Windows PC or an arm64 Android phone.
  • A weaker fit: you need a player for older Android versions, 32-bit Windows, or non-arm64 Android devices, since the article names only the targets above.
  • Not the right tool: you want to stream from websites or video services. The project plays local files only.

The article does not include any independent performance or compatibility comparison with VLC or other players. If a particular codec or container matters for your files, test it with a representative file before relying on the app.

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AndroidFFmpegMedia Playeropen sourceRustTauriVLCWindows

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