It is an open source software available for free download. Use VLC Player for Mac OS XĪnother way of playing MKV files is through installation of VLC player for Mac. Download and install Perian and start playing MKV files easily. Once you download and install this component on your Mac OS X, it lets QuickTime play MKV, FLV, DIVX and AVI files. Very few Mac users are aware that there exists an extended QuickTime component called ‘Perian’, which enables the Mac player to play MKV files. Here are some of the prime alternatives you could opt for. There are several options to choose from, to play an MKV file, as you will find out in the following lines. That’s what makes it a preferred format for high-definition videos. The reason why many video encoders prefer using this format is that MKV preserves the quality of the original video to a higher degree after compression, compared to other formats. While video files with the Matroska container have a ‘.mkv’ extension, audio files come with a ‘.mka’ extension. MKV or Matroska files are aptly named after the Russian name for ‘Nesting Dolls’, which is ‘Matryoshka’, as it is designed to be a universal container for multiple audio and video file formats.

Before I talk about playing MKV files on a Mac, let me introduce you to the Matroska file format and explain why it’s preferred over other container formats while encoding and containing videos. Thanks to the open source movement, we have many media player alternatives to bank upon, even if proprietary media player software programs like QuickTime won’t play some formats. So does that mean the only way you can watch a MKV video file is by converting it to MOV? No, that’s certainly not the case. The default media player on the Mac OS X platform is QuickTime video player which unfortunately doesn’t support the MKV format.

One of the best open source container formats is Matroska Multimedia Container, which comes with the ‘.mkv’ extension. Proprietary video players generally don’t support open source file formats, but ( thankfully), open source multimedia players do have support for proprietary formats. Some are proprietary video compression formats while some are open source. If you find yourself in a conundrum about how to play MKV files on a Mac, this article will be a helpful read.Īs you must have discovered, there are hundreds of file formats in which audio and video files may be encoded. There are some video file formats that your QuickTime player just doesn’t play.

Play mkv files mac