Videolan, the company behind the popular program VLC Media Player are currently working on version 2.2 of the player.

While information are sparse at this point as to what the company will change, improve or introduce in the media player, one feature has been integrated already in the latest development builds of VLC: an Addons Manager.

As you may now if you are using VLC Media Player, it supports addons and plugins that you can install to improve the player's capabilities.

Add-ons can be installed from the official add-ons repository which you can find here on the Videolan website.

Installation requires you to download the addon, extract it, and move it to the VLC extensions directory where it is then picked up by the client.

The Addons Manager will be integrated into VLC Media Player 2.2 as it stands. The main advantage that it provides you with is that you can browse and install extensions for the media player directly from within its interface.

Here is how that works:

Open VLC Media Player 2.2 on your system. Select Tools > Plugins and Extensions. Switch to the Addons Manager tab here. It is a new tab that is not available in earlier versions of the media player. Uncheck the "only installed" box.

You can use the search to find addons of interest, or select one of the available categories instead from the menu. The categories appear identical to the ones offered on the official VLC-Addons website.

Available right now are skins (themes), playlist parsers, service discovery and extensions.

While you find lots of themes currently listed here once you uncheck the only installed box, other types of extensions are listed sparsely only here.

When you click on an addon, you get options to install it right away or display more information about it. Installation works right away and you do not have to do anything other than hitting the install button in the Addons Manager.

This is more comfortable than the previous option, as it removes the need to manually move extensions into the right directory on your system.

It is not clear yet if the Addons Manager will display all available add-ons for the player, or if it limits the selection somehow. It can be that it only displays extensions that are compatible with the version of the player that you are running, which explains why there are not many listed right now by it.

Verdict

The Addons Manager makes the management and installation of VLC Media Player extensions comfortable. It is likely that its integration will introduce more users to extensions which in turn may fuel more development as well.

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