Huawei's been in hot water for most all of 2018 thanks to various legal disputes with the U.S. government, and now the company's facing repercussions for its heavy-handed custom Android skin.
On July 25, VLC creator VideoLAN announced on Twitter that the popular media player app can no longer be downloaded by Huawei devices on the Google Play Store.
PSA: @HuaweiMobile phones are now blacklisted and cannot get VLC on the Play Store.
Their ridiculous policy of killing all background apps (except their own) breaks VLC audio background playback (of course).
See https://t.co/QzDW7KbV4I and many other reports...@HuaweiFrPSA: @HuaweiMobile phones are now blacklisted and cannot get VLC on the Play Store.
Their ridiculous policy of killing all background apps (except their own) breaks VLC audio background playback (of course).
See https://t.co/QzDW7KbV4I and many other reports...@HuaweiFr— VideoLAN (@videolan) July 25, 2018July 25, 2018
As mentioned above, the reason for this decision has to do with Huawei's EMUI Android skin that aggressively kills non-Huawei background apps — thus resulting in a less-than-ideal experience when trying to use VLC for background playback.
VideoLAN goes on to note that this change affects all Huawei devices (not just newer ones), and if you still want to use VLC, you can always download the APK file directly from its website.
It's possible VLC will be made available for Huawei phones later on down the road if Huawei decides to change the way third-party background apps are handled, and seeing as how this is one of the largest apps in its class, maybe this will be a big enough statement for some real change to take place.
