How to Download and Use Skins in VLC Media Player

VideoLAN VLC Media Player is certainly the most popular media player application for Windows, Linux, Android and other operating systems. People love it because it does not need any external media codecs to play the media files and it does support almost all kinds of media file formats that exist today. It offers features that other media players do not offer for example, ability to stream a local video over your network and the downloading of subtitles from within the VLC media player interface. But what many people might not know is that you can also download and change the skin of VLC media player to change its appearance.

In order to download and change a new skin in VLC Media Player, you can use these steps:

1. Download the skin files from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.html and place them in the VLC media player skins folder (typically C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\Skins)
2. Launch VLC media player and press the hotkey Ctrl+P to open the Preferences window.
3. Switch to the Interface tab and select Use Custom Skin under the Look & Feel section.
4. Click on the Save button to close the Preferences window and then close all VLC media player windows. You will have to relaunch VLC media player all over again to load the new settings.
5. When VLC Media Player loads, it will show a custom skin. You can right-click anywhere in the player window to choose Interface → Select Skin and then choose the skin.
6. If only Default skin is being displayed in the right-click menu, then you have not placed the skins files in the proper folder as explained in the Step 1 above.

Changing the VLC Media Player skin can make it look more appealing. VLC website offers so many skins on their website, but if you want more skins then you can visit the DeviantArt website: http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all/customization/skins/media/vlcmedia/?order=9&offset=3.