How to play .flac and .ogg files on your iPhone or iPod Touch

by Ross McKillop on June 11, 2008

iPhone iPod

At first it was called vlc4iphone, now it’s called ZodPlay, and at some point in the not too distant future it will once again be called vlc4phone (naming history details can be found here). Regardless of its name, it can play .ogg and .flac files – something which a number of us have been hoping against hope would happen some day.

Yes ZodPlay/vlc4iphone is currently in beta, for beta tester members only – but it will be available to the public soon at http://www.zodttd.com. It’s also worth noting that ZodPlay/vlc4iphone can also play FLV, XviD, H264, MPEG4, AAC and many other audio/video formats will be supported soon.

  1. Once installed, you’ll have a ZodPlay/vlc4iphone icon on your iPhone/iPod Touch dashboard.


    2. click to enlarge

  2. Upload your music files to /var/mobile/Media/zodplay/ (or /vlc4iphone depending on the version)


    3. click to enlarge

  3. And once you launch ZodPlay/vlc4iphone the files will be available to play, or add to playlists.


    4. click to enlarge

  4. Select a file to play…


    5. click to enlarge

  5. and away you go. Finally, ogg and flac files can play on an iPhone/iPod Touch.


    6. click to enlarge

  • http://thehypefactor.com KrAzy Che3To

    This is for a hacked iPhone right?

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  • http://www.oftheday.ru Invisible trace

    Не покупаю айфон пока только из-за НЕ корректной поддержки lossless формата, flac, ape, wv .. отдавать 20тысяч только за то, чтобы поговорить и потыкать на экранчик на мой взгляд это сумасшествие. Очень надеюсь, что к концу лета, ну к началу этой зимы айфон таки научится понимать не только свой эппл лосслесс

  • Bob

    will this FLAC program work on the new 3G iphone? thanks in advance for your reply.

  • http://www.mercurythread.co.uk Mike

    Anyone know if this works on the iPhone 3g yet? Been a few months since Bob asked and was hoping for some help too.
    cheers

  • MidgetHat

    Shame you have to jailbreak to get this.

  • rolls20s

    MidgetHat
    “Shame you have to jailbreak to get this.”

    What’s wrong with jailbreaking it? It’s easy and expands the functionality of the iphone/ipod touch exponentially. If I couldn’t jailbreak it, I wouldn’t even own it.

  • Alex

    rolls20s, I completely agree with you about Jail breaking… but I am a technoid, probably like yourself. The reason it’s a shame this needs jailbrokeness to work, is the same reason Linux for the desktop has languished- non-technoids don’t understand how to work it effectively, and thus the software and the format it represents won’t reach full adaptation. The iPhone is a marvel in it’s out-of-the-box state because it’s usable by anyone, just like the iPod was. Jailbreak it, and it might have more features, but Grandma and Uncle Tom won’t know how to properly use it anymore, or how to fix it if something goes haywire.

  • Kun

    Alex: It’s not the developer’s fault –it’s almost certain apple’s evil policy, who obviously want ipod/itunes to be the only music player on their devices

  • blackbird9

    Kun, I beg to differ
    Although they may have an official legal stance against hacking….There is a pretty big market of us with interest in hacking, and since apple is in the business of appealing to wide markets, I wouldn’t bet against them secretly liking the attention they get from the ‘explorers’… if you like haha

    further, one of apples market competitors: Nokia…
    http://www.forum.nokia.com/

  • Wade

    be good to get it to play natively in the ipod on iphone so it works with say an iphone dock.

  • Jimmy

    Shame on Apple! FLAC is a universal and free lossless codec and should be natively supported by iPods. Not supporting FLACs is like having an mp3 player that doesn’t support mp3s!

  • http://jooh.no Jon Austenaa

    That is the nastiest workaround I have ever seen :D
    It would be better if they could hack the ipod program on the iphone and a way to make itunes sync ogg files, but I guess that is not very possible.

    I would have thought Apple would support OGG on the iphone after Steve Jobs “thoughts on flash” artikle. He preaches about open and free standards, HTML5 with its OGG Theora and Vorbis media standard. Maybe their argument is iPhone cannot hardware accelerate OGG vorbis audio and therefore uses too much battery. But that is a poor excuse. Completely open and free formats are the future, and OGG decode support in a chip would be the natural.

  • Chris W

    @Invisible trace
    Losslesss formats are huge. It seems like what you want is a record player or at least a cd player. I doubt many people want this ability because it would limit the number of songs they could carry to a very small number, but I guess it would be nice if they gave you the capability. I just with it natively supported ogg.

  • z3phyr

    any music lover wouldn’t mind the sizer as long as all his favorite songs play in flac
    its just so awesome
    thanks for this article would never have found out otherwise

  • Nub

    oh no i cant have 2000 songs on my ipod when i only listen to around 400 of them whatever shall i do

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