VLC celebrates 6 billion downloads and announces a must-have new feature

© Manfred Richter/Pixabay

In 2025, the VLC player is not about to retire. According to TechCrunch, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN, even explains in a LinkedIn post that, despite the existence of streaming, VLC has a growing number of active users. And now, the application would total more than 6 billion downloads.

Present at CES in Las Vegas, VideoLAN teased a feature that should make VLC even more popular: automatic subtitles and translation generated by artificial intelligence. According to a post on X, this technology will be based on open source artificial intelligence models that run locally on the user's device. As a result, it will be possible to use this feature when you are not connected to the internet.

For the moment, it is not known when this feature will be available. But in any case, it is a novelty that should make VLC even more popular. And it is probably also a nod to generation Z.

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Subtitles are extremely popular among young people

Subtitles were created to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and to make content accessible in multiple languages. But today, many young people use subtitles, even if they have no hearing problems and even if the video is in their mother tongue.

The reason? First of all, subtitles have been standardized by short video platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels. But beyond that, there is also a practical side. Indeed, when a video is subtitled, we can watch it without sound (when we are in noisy places, for example). Subtitles also allow us to stay focused on a video.

In 2023, a survey conducted in Great Britain indicated that 61% of young people aged 18 to 24 would activate subtitles. And the advantage of the technology that will be used by VLC is that it will allow you to have subtitles even on videos that do not have them.

• VLC is still popular in 2025
• The application has a growing number of users and is said to have exceeded 6 billion downloads
• VideoLAN is preparing a feature that will allow the application to automatically generate subtitles using artificial intelligence
• This is a feature that should make VLC even more popular among young people of Generation Z
• They tend to activate subtitles, even for videos in their native language

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