or is there a better alternative?
is VLC player good for security and privacy?
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What I personally dislike about VLC on Android is that it requests a highly invasive storage permission to access all of your files.
This can be mitigated on GrapheneOS via the Storage Scopes feature, but this isn't the case on other operating systems, and I don't see a good reason why it couldn't just request the appropriate media permissions for audio and video only instead.
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VLC only asks for mic, network, notification and sensors permission.
How do I configure storage scopes? I remember before there was this request to access all files, but I don't see it now.
matchboxbananasynergy What I personally dislike about VLC on Android is that it requests a highly invasive storage permission to access all of your files.
It's the same for me. Do you know if it's similar an Linux for example? And generally, could you recommend a VLC alternative?
[deleted] You don't see it because it's not a regular permission that would show up under Settings > Apps > VLC > Permissions, but a special app permission.
Please go to Settings > Special app access > All files access and you can deny it that permission from there.
When the application launches again, it should prompt you. During that prompt, you should see an option called "Configure Storage Scopes".
bartenderstoneware I have heard good things about https://github.com/moneytoo/Player but I don't personally use any apps for watching videos locally, so can't personally vouch for it. Feel free to try it.
matchboxbananasynergy
Thank you for your help. I will have a look at the alternative you mentioned.
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I use foobar2000 but its not on fdriod. Have to go direct to them at https://www.foobar2000.org/apk. Also, this is music only, not sure if you're looking for video playback.
matchboxbananasynergy I don't see a good reason why it couldn't just request the appropriate media permissions for audio and video only instead.
Probably because VLC's definition of what constitutes "media" is vastly greater than that of AOSP.
It's Free Software. If it would not be good, people would not contribute as vastly as they do.
I use VLC with no permissions and storage scopes for my music and video folders only. Works fine that way. Its a great video player, for music the UI is a bit boring but it does everything I need as far as making a playlist, shuffle, etc... Only thing it lacks IMO is a tag editor .
Are the permissions shown on the all permissions screen for the app just those possible and the ones on the app permissions screen the ones the app is actually allowed to use? Seems like this must be the case but I can't find any documentation or discussion about this. There is one thread started on Reddit that was shut down without an answer or redirect. VLC and every app I check seems to have contradictory permissions between these two lists.
On the App info screen under permissions the text shows no permissions granted. Click that and you're now on the app permissions screen. Here, no permissions allowed is shown under allowed permissions. For VLC, microphone, network, notifications, and sensors are shown under not allowed. Great. Now click the three dot menu in the top right and go to the all permission screen. The first permission in the list is microphone and just below that shows record audio. Click that and a message says "this app can record audio using the microphone while the app is in use." This is just an example app and permission.
TruthBeTold The "all permissions" screen you're referring to refers to what permissions an app is declraring in its manifest. Meaning, the permissions you can grant it.
The permissions it actually has are the ones shown in App info > permissions
Thanks for the reply matchboxbananasynergy. Changing the name of the all permissions list to something more clear or adding some text in the list to state what you have said sure would be helpful for everyone to understand what is going on here.
TruthBeTold
This is an android presentation that goes back many years and is not related to Graphene os, just fyi.
I am currently using MX Player pro (since I bought it) and I can tell VLC is way better when it comes to privacy.