The VideoLAN Forums

There are some MP3 files that I play frequently (they help me fall asleep). The bottom line is I need to download these files to my iPhone so they're stored there and then be able to play them directly from the phone. They're low quality bitrate, so iTunes refuses to upload them from my LAN. I'm often in places where I can't get an internet connection or I'm dealing with a rural connection that has super-limited bandwidth. (Try living with a 50GB bandwidth limit per month!)

With that in mind, I want to be able to download these files from my local media server to my iPhone and then use VLC to play these once they're on my phone.

If it matters, this is an older iPhone that no longer has a cell connection, but everything else works on it.

Have you tried "Sharing via Wifi" It starts up a little webserver, which you can then go to your laptop, point the browser to the URL listed on your phone, and upload music all you want. I do this for Oggs, as iTunes won't touch those either.

Thank you!

I wasn't clear whether "Sharing via Wifi" was on my iPhone, my desktop, or where, so it took me a minute to find it in VLC. Once I did, remembered seeing it before and thought that would have been sharing as streaming, not as downloading. I turned it on, went to my desktop and pointed Chrome at the IP address it gave and easily dragged and dropped all the files into that page and had them all download to my iPhone, then turned it off and went to Audio in VLC and found all my files ready to play.

Thanks! I had been using 8Player Pro before, for this function, but it's a pain and the company is not good about responding to help requests and there are parts of the UI that are just a major pain. For instance, it lets you download files, but then trying to create a playlist of all of them is convoluted. I don't remember all the steps, but I had to get it to load them all to play and that was not straightforward - too much guessing and trial and error.