How to Enable VLC Web Plugin on Chrome/Firefox?

What Is VLC Web Plugin?

VLC web plugin, to be brief, enables you to play back videos in many formats in your web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. Therefore, you might assume that there are many VLC plugins for different browsers that should be downloaded one by one. Not exactly. Here, we'll show you the detailed way to play VLC in Chrome and other browsers.

How Do We Enable VLC Web Plugin?

It might be the case that you've got tons of video in random formats that you might not be able to get to play back in your web browser like Chrome and Firefox. Video LAN truly offers an amazing video player that can play on browsers. No needs to look for VLC web plugin download on softonic or CNET, since its web plugin is included in the media player installer. Here covers the basics for installing VLC as a web plugin:

1. Download VLC media player
If you have already install VLC player, just uninstall it and then reinstall. You can either follow the below links to download VLC for Windows 10 and VLC 64bit or directly head to VLC official download site to get the latest version of VLC player instantly. Remember, the purpose here is to get you at the VLC Setup Window for customization.

2. After the download completes, click the installer to view VLC setup wizard;

3. Install VLC after checking all the features and web plugins and extensions;

Check Mozilla plugin here to enable VLC plugin for Mozilla products like Firefox; Checking Active plugin here to enable VLC to be embedded in other web browsers and third-party applications.

For VLC plugin Chrome users: Open Chrome and type "chrome://plugins" in the browser to find the VLC web plugin.
For VLC plugin Firefox users: Open Firefox and click Tool > Add-ons > Plugins and scroll down to find the vlc web plugin.

4. Now, an option named "VLC Web Plugin" will appear in the plugin list of your browser. Click and select "Always Activate" to enable VLC web plugin for your browsers.

Note: Google Chrome version 45 and above no longer support NPAPI which is used by VLC plugin. It is now supporting its native PPAPI. So, if you cannot find the vlc web plugin under "chrome://plugins", you may have to change a browser to Firefox.

To test the VLC plugin, you can visit the VLC Web Plugins demo page. Now that you know not all OS supports VLC plugin, make sure that you've got VLC in 32-bit installed rather than 64-bit for compatibility convenience and that you restart the browser for it to recognize VLC web plugin.

VLC Web Plugin Alternative I: 5KPlayer

If you run into files that VLC plugin cannot handle, here we further recommend you a quick backup solution - 5KPlayer. This is a great web media player that allows you to free download the web files for playback locally without internet disruption and it supports almost all web formats and codecs including MP4 H265, H264, M3U8, FLV, F4V, OGV, WebM, OGG, 3GP, VP8, VP9 etc. Any videos on the internet from HD to 4K, 8K res files can all be read by this media player with smooth and high playback quality. This VLC web plugin alternative can save you from troubles when VLC crashes unexpectedly.

VLC Web Plugin Alternative II: Adobe Flash Player Plugin

If you cannot play the video with VLC web plugin in the browser, you can also resort to one of the best professional flash players for browsers on both Mac and Windows OS. Adobe Flash Player web plugin might be more mature in this field than VLC web plugin considering that it can read more web files, flash games etc.

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