Hacker News Reader

You can't use VLC as a server, but you can use it as a DLNA client.

That setup would be a media server on your desktop (I'd recommend Jellyfin for this, there's a windows app) which broadcasts a DLNA server on your local network.

Then in VLC, you click on "mDNS Network Discovery" in the sidebar that comes up in the playlist view and your computer will show up with a folder structure.

Here's what that looks like for me: https://f002.backblazeb2.com/file/ATibPod/vlc-as-jellyfin-cl...

I use the android version of VLC to browse a network share of movies and play on my Chromecast.

I just use an sftp server, which you can add a connection to in VLC and explore your files like a file explorer