Play unsupported media on your iPhone with this app

There is a growing generation of mobile users out there who are turning to their iPhone more and more as their primary media device. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have the same screen size of a television, laptop or even a tablet, they find that the convenience of having such a versatile media tool right in their pocket is too great to turn anywhere else.

But if you do use your iPhone as your media go to, then you’ll know that it is not without limits. The biggest among them may be the number of unsupported video formats for iOS. Many users have found themselves discovering this the hard way when they import one of their favorite videos over to their phone and suddenly find themselves staring at the dreaded “Media Not Supported” message.

Thankfully like most things the iPhone isn’t built to do right out of the box; there is an app to fix that.

Specifically, there is the Universal Movie Player app. Just as the name says, the Universal Media Player app allows for nearly every single currently supported video format to be played with ease. Simply use the app to import your videos through either direct transfer or cloud services and they will be instantly viewable regardless of media type.

More than just an update to the iPhone’s media capabilities, though, the Universal Media Player features some neat tricks of its own. With its video alteration options and gesture based input commands it’s easy to see why this app has long been considered one of the best options for what it does.

Universal Media Player is a reasonable $0.99 on the App Store. This is truly one of those apps you did not know you needed in your life until you have it. To download Universal Media Player you must have iOS 8.0 or later installed.

Another option to playback unsupported media formats on the iPhone is the open source VLC media player. VLC has been ported to several mobile and desktop platforms. The iOS version, VLC for Mobile is free on iTunes and requires iOS 7.0 or later.