ReVLC

A modern, lightweight media player built on libVLC.

revlc.vercel.app · Download the alpha

ReVLC aims for full VLC feature parity with a cleaner, faster UI. It is early: see the feature parity checklist for what works today and what's next.

Cassiopeia A · ESA/Webb. Footage credits are under Credits.

Click any screenshot for the full size, or browse docs/screenshots.

Stack

• Engine: libVLC 3 (the same engine as VLC), loaded at runtime
• Core: Rust (player state, playlist, events)
• UI: Tauri 2 + Svelte 5, rendered by the system web view
• Video: libVLC draws into a native view placed under a transparent web view, so the HTML controls sit on top of hardware-decoded video

See docs/plan.md for the reasoning and milestones.

Install (macOS, Apple Silicon)

Download the .dmg from Releases and drag ReVLC to Applications. Builds aren't notarised yet, so the first time, right-click ReVLC and choose Open, or run xattr -cr /Applications/ReVLC.app. After that, ReVLC updates itself (Settings → General → Updates).

Install (Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit)

Download ReVLC-<version>-alpha-x64-setup.exe from Releases and run it; it installs for the current user, no admin rights needed. The installer isn't code-signed yet, so if SmartScreen warns about it, choose More info → Run anyway.

Command line

ReVLC takes files, folders and URLs like VLC does, plus some of VLC's options:

# macOS
/Applications/ReVLC.app/Contents/MacOS/revlc [options] [files or URLs…]
# Windows
"%LOCALAPPDATA%\ReVLC\revlc.exe" [options] [files or URLs…]

Option	What it does
--fullscreen, -f	Go fullscreen when the video starts
--start-time=SECONDS	Start what's opened at this point (instead of where you left off)
--stop-time=SECONDS, --run-time=SECONDS	Stop at this point, or after this long
--play-and-exit	Quit once the queue has played to its end
--no-audio, --no-video	Play without sound, or without picture
--	Everything after it is a file, even if it starts with -

Any other --option goes to libVLC, so most of VLC's command-line options work, such as --network-caching=3000 or --deinterlace-mode=yadif. Give values with = (a number after an option, as in --network-caching 3000, works too). Options libVLC doesn't know are dropped with a notice rather than stopping ReVLC from starting. Options that would replace ReVLC's window or interface, send the video elsewhere, or move libVLC's settings and plugins (--intf, --vout, --sout, --config, --reset-config, --help and similar) are ignored, also with a notice.

Options given on the command line override the same setting in Settings until ReVLC quits. On Windows, if ReVLC is already running, it plays the new files (with their --start-time and friends) and ignores the other options.

Building

Experimental Linux Mint 22.x (Intel/AMD 64-bit)

Download the experimental x64 .deb from Releases for Linux Mint 22.x or Ubuntu 24.04, and install it:

sudo apt install ./ReVLC-0.2.10-alpha-amd64.deb

APT installs libVLC 3 and its plugins from your distribution. Launch ReVLC from the application menu or run revlc. These experimental packages don't self-update; install a newer .deb to update. Development packages and smoke-test evidence are also available from the Linux build workflow in GitHub Actions.

Video uses X11, including XWayland in a Wayland session. Mint's default Cinnamon X11 session is the initial target. This first Linux build uses software decoding and GTK compositing, with video output capped at 1080p to limit CPU copies; larger files still play, scaled down. Hardware video output is reserved for a later build. Native Wayland, Mint 21.x, ARM builds, and automatic audio-CD detection aren't supported by this build. Camera capture uses Video4Linux2, microphone capture uses the default PulseAudio/PipeWire source, and screen capture covers the X11 desktop.

To build on Mint 22.x / Ubuntu 24.04:

sudo apt install build-essential libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libssl-dev librsvg2-dev libx11-dev patchelf \
  libvlc5 libvlccore9 vlc-plugin-base vlc-plugin-video-output ffmpeg
npm ci
npm run build:app

FFmpeg makes the seek bar previews: it decodes a whole video's keyframes in one pass, on the GPU through VA-API where it can. Without it ReVLC falls back to libVLC, which is several times slower. (The macOS and Windows packages bundle FFmpeg, decoding with VideoToolbox and D3D11VA: scripts/prepare-ffmpeg.sh.)

Use Rust stable and Node 22+. The package is written to src-tauri/target/release/bundle/deb/; no updater signing key is needed.

macOS and Windows

Requirements: Rust, Node 20+. On Windows, run the scripts from Git Bash.

npm install
npm run prepare:vlc   # macOS: copies libVLC from /Applications/VLC.app or downloads VLC 3; Windows: downloads VLC 3
npm run tauri dev     # run in development
npm run build:app     # macOS: ReVLC.app and a .dmg; Windows: an NSIS installer (both in src-tauri/target/release/bundle)

prepare:vlc puts libVLC (libraries, plugins and Lua scripts, about 90 MB) in src-tauri/vlc, which is bundled into the app. Without it, development builds fall back to an installed VLC.app. Set REVLC_VLC_DIR to use libVLC from somewhere else (a directory with lib/, plugins/ and share/; on Windows, VLC's own layout with the DLLs next to plugins/ and lua/).

Releasing

Releases are built on GitHub Actions, for free on this public repo:

1. Bump the version in package.json, src-tauri/tauri.conf.json and src-tauri/Cargo.toml. If dependencies changed, run scripts/third-party-licenses.sh (needs cargo install cargo-about --locked --features cli) to update the notices in licenses/. Commit and push.
2. Run the Release workflow (Actions → Release → Run workflow, or gh workflow run release.yml -f notes="What changed"). It makes a draft pre-release, builds macOS and Windows, attaches their files, and merges both into the update manifest. It won't rebuild a published release.
3. Download the run's latest-json artifact into site/ (gh run download <run id> -n latest-json -D site) and commit it.
4. For Linux, run Linux build on the same commit, confirm its installed-package smoke test passes, and attach the .deb from ReVLC-linux-mint-x64 to the draft release. Linux is deliberately absent from the updater manifest.
5. Update the version and download URLs in this README and site/index.html. Publish the release, then deploy the site; installed copies see the update:

cd site && vercel deploy --prod

Updates are signed with the key in the TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY secret (a copy of ~/.tauri/revlc-updater.key); installed copies only accept updates signed with it. npm run build:app and scripts/release-files.sh still build and collect a release locally, signed with that file.

Privacy

ReVLC sends usage statistics with no personal information: the app version, the kind of computer, how quickly videos start and seek, and what kind of video played (codec, resolution, length, time watched). Never file names, titles or links. Turn it off in Settings → General → Privacy. Details in docs/analytics.md.

Known issues

• Subtitles can overlap the control bar while it's visible (Settings → Subtitles → "Raise subtitles by" moves them up).
• HDR is tone-mapped to SDR by libVLC 3 (true HDR on XDR displays is milestone M2).
• Linux support is experimental; see the Mint 22.x build instructions above.
• Windows: the installer isn't code-signed yet.

Contributing

Pick an unchecked item in docs/parity.md. Most "engine" items only need UI and a thin command in src-tauri/src/vlc.rs.

Credits

The screenshots show a demo folder, "Deep Sky", made from these clips (chapter markers and captions added):

• Pan of Cassiopeia A: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (UGent), J. DePasquale (STScI), N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), M. Zimani (ESA/Webb). CC BY 4.0.
• Pan of Westerlund 2: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, V. Almendros-Abad, M. Guarcello, K. Monsch, the EWOCS team, N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb). CC BY 4.0.
• Solar flare, April 17, 2016: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO.

The subtitle preview in Settings, which ships with the app, is a still from Tears of Steel, (CC) Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Hitesh Rohira

ReVLC is free software under the GPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE).

The macOS and Windows apps bundle libVLC 3.0.24 (LGPL-2.1-or-later) and VLC plugins (mostly GPL-2.0-or-later) from VideoLAN. Their source code, including the build recipes for the libraries the plugins contain (contrib/ in the tarball), is in VideoLAN's 3.0.24 download folder. The experimental Linux package uses the distribution's libVLC and VLC plugins; their source and notices come from the distribution.

The licence texts for everything the app ships, and the notices for its Rust and JavaScript dependencies, are in licenses/. Installed copies have them too.

"VLC" is a trademark of VideoLAN. ReVLC is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by VideoLAN.