VLC For Android Beta Has Ended Its Ridiculously Long Region Lockout That Excluded The US And Canada

We in the tech industry have a tendency to throw around the word “finally” perhaps a tad more often than we should. Developing things takes time, and some features that seem easy to implement on the surface actually require a great deal of effort and man hours to accomplish.

Some things, though, really make us just go seriously? VLC for Android is one such case. The app, which first appeared in a beta form in the summer of 2012, has not been available to North American users in the Play Store. Yes, that includes you, dear American readers, and not just our often-neglected Canadian neighbors in the cold, barren North. Sure, we all could install the APK manually, but that just wasn’t the same.

Now things have finally changed. Yes, finally.

At launch, VideoLan said the lack of North American Play Store availability was the result of its not having access to enough devices from the region. Then, roughly two years later and right before the chaos that was Google I/O, the project sent out this tweet.

So in case you missed it, there it is. If you meander on over to Google Play, you will see that VLC is now sitting there innocently, smiling back at you sweetly as though it hasn’t been playing hide-and-seek alone for the past two years.

Thanks, Jeremy.