How to get the latest version of VLC on Ubuntu 18.04

VLC is one of the most popular and complete players that we can find for Ubuntu. However, this player does not have the latest version in the official Ubuntu repositories, which causes us to lose certain functionalities.

And if instead of Ubuntu 18.04 we have Ubuntu 16.04, the problem is more serious then VLC version is not compatible with gadgets like chromecast. But this can be easily solved in Ubuntu. One of the most effective methods to have the latest version of VLC is to use the snap package. Currently, through snap we can install the latest stable version of VLC as well as the development version.

We can also make use of official VLC repositories that we can use for Ubuntu. In any case, let us choose one way or another, before we have to uninstall the version of VLC that we have. Since Ubuntu by default will use the version of its repositories and not the version of snap or the VLC repository.

To uninstall the VLC version we have to open a terminal and execute the following:

sudo apt remove vlc

Once we have uninstalled the old version, the new version can be installed with the command:

sudo snap install vlc

And if we want to install the development version we have to execute the following:

sudo snap install vlc --edge

If we choose the VLC PPA repositories, then in the terminal we have to execute the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vlc

With which the latest version of VLC will be installed. The process is simple but I want to emphasize that we have to uninstall the old version before using these methods since but Ubuntu by default will use the old version and not the modern version, with which we will have certain problems.