I recommend lower expectations.

I highly recommend VLC

It still is, but it used to be too

What do you recommend?

VLC

mpv

Looks like you have a project for yourself. I look forwards to the Sabre VLC Android fork

Next player

i personally run my own jellyfin server. the interface isn't quite there yet, but it's overall more usable. not sure it'd fit your use case though.

Thank you for asking, I've been thinking about this lately. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you

The only problem I have with VLC is audio sync for stuff on my SD card 😭

VLC is still my favorite all around player, and I would recommend supporting them with some funding to fix the bugs. You can try Auxio for local music and MPV for videos. There are many clients for streaming from your own server or others. It just depends on the protocol or platform you want to scrape.

Hasn't VLC in general been forgotten by the devs ? I don't remember last when I updated VLC (I don't have automatic updates enabled).

Not that this is a concern for my usecase though, I'm okay as long as it is chugging along.

Edit: I meant to specify that I don't just mean the android port, Windows and Linux as well.

Nova player

I use PotPlayer extracted and run in portable mode.

SVPlayer or VLC.

MPC-BE 64 or something like that. It’s one of the only apps I’ve found that can handle HDR really well, plus any file type I throw at it, and easily changes audio/subtitle tracks like in VLC by right clicking. It took me a while to set up though, I don’t even remember how I did it now. When I get back to my PC I’ll double check the name, there’s a few with similar names and not all we’re equal in my experience.

VLC has shown its age for like, the last 9 years now. There are a lot of minor inconveniences with the program that add up and have made me seek out better options. However, I haven't managed to completely get away from it since it still plays everything and mostly does what I want it to do.

The next best option I've found in the last year is KMPlayer. Lots of customization, mostly plays all files (AV1 stuff still crashes my KMP despite me having the codecs installed, whatever), and the video image doesn't artifact if you seek back and forth a lot like it does in VLC.

Edit: just realized which community I was in. There is a free Android version, though I have never used it. FWIW, I use KMP on desktop with strict firewall filters to block it from doing anything sus.