Add Playback, Volume & Brightness Control Gestures To VLC Player For iOS
There are many media player out there that are appreciated solely because they offer some great gesture-based controls. There are plenty of such examples in our compilation of the best video players for iOS, but most users prefer using apps that have already managed to gain a fair amount of popularity. VLC Player is certainly an app that fits the bill. It was around in the App Store for a short while before Apple took it down, but recently made a triumphant return on both iPhone and iPad. For the duration that VLC was out of the App Store, it remained available for jailbreak users via the Cydia store. So, Cydia and VLC are no strangers, which makes the release of VLC Gestures quite unsurprising. The tweak is aimed at augmenting the VLC app by adding gesture control to it.
By default, VLC Player is pretty simple, and does not have any gestures. There are some really good playback controls though, but they have to be accessed via the buttons available on the playback screen. VLC Gestures doesn’t let you control every single feature of the app via gestures, but all the important ones can be handled by the tweak.
The tweak has a menu of its own in the stock Settings app, but it only deals with setting the exact time jump that occurs every time the rewind or forward gesture is performed. The default values are 30 seconds for fast forward and 10 seconds for fast rewind. Either of these can be increased or decreased to a time period between 2 seconds to a minute. Once you are satisfied with the settings and have enabled the tweak, just exit the Settings app and launch VLC. There is no need to respring, as the changes take effect automatically.
The gestures added to VLC Player by the tweak include the following:
- Play/Pause: Tap the screen using two fingers. This might not be too comfortable, and a single-finger tap will do better in a future update, in our opinion.
- Forward/Rewind: Swiping to the right of the screen forwards the video, while going in the other direction takes you back.
- Volume: Vertically swiping on the right of the screen lets you increase and decrease a video’s volume.
- Brightness: This gesture is similar to the volume one, but works on the left side of the screen.
Whenever a gesture is performed using VLC Gestures, a corresponding HUD shows up just below the seek bar, which is a very rare feature in gesture-based tweaks, and is quite a welcome attention to detail.
VLC Gestures is a free package, and can be downloaded from the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store. If you are a fan of the media player, do give the tweak a go as it brings a whole new dimension to controlling VLC.
