The VideoLAN Forums

Hi folks,

I was recently given a Macbook Pro from a friend who got a much newer laptop (& I LOVE macs, but haven't had one in ages, so this is kewl!) Have run VLC on it since immediately loading it when I first got this laptop - but just started having problems with it unexpectedly crashing. When I went to check for upgrades, figuring that probably made more sense than troubleshooting the v. 1.0.5 goldeneye, well, I have to ask two things.

First, sometimes the latest versions of programs can have instability problems or bugs - is the most current VLC actually the best, or is there a slightly older version that seems better/more stable on mac's - and if so, where and where can I find and download its installer?

Next, I was a little surprised that VLC seems to require download and complete reinstall, rather than upgrading the existing version on your computer. Probably better anyhow since my version had started having problems (maybe my fault, as I'd gotten very low on open disk space on this computer, but now have >10% of the drive open). Only how do I first properly and thoroughly UNINSTALL the old version from a mac, my now being relatively mac ignorant after not having had one for so many years?

Thanks for your help in advance!!

First you'll want to check what version of Mac OS X you're running on (Apple menu > About this Mac). The latest release of VLC (1.1.3) will run on 10.5 and later.

I can't recommend a particular version of VLC, but the current 1.1.3 version works fine on my MBP with 10.6.4 without any instability issues.

Generally applications are installed in /Applications folder. To uninstall you'll need to do two things: 1: drag the application (in this case VLC) to the trash. 2: when you download VLC, the disk image mounts and you'll see a folder called Goodies. In that folder is an applescript file called Delete VLC Preferences -- execute that script to delete the preferences file. Last step is to empty the trash, and VLC is removed.

Installation is just as simple as dragging the VLC app to /Applications folder.