The GIMP of multimedia players

VLC media player is one of the most known free and open-source multimedia players in the world. And for a good reason too: it is cross-platform, boasts numerous features—even obscure ones like video streaming over network. Everything in it is great, except that you cannot pause and resume the video with a mouse click. At first, I thought that was a problem with my wireless mouse. Then, after researching about it I stumbled upon this: a plugin that pauses and plays the video on mouse click, no joke. In software there is a concept known as user experience or UX — effectively a collection of well known patterns that users already know and use, which makes it easier to transfer skills between different software. Things like drop-down menus, radio button circles and checkbox boxes, things like that. Universal everywhere. More transparent patterns like swipe gestures on mobile or mouse click or dragging — all of these are established UX patterns. Well, not in VLC, at least not in 2026 yet.…