Written by Kaylee Wood | Last updated: January 28, 2021
"Hi guys, for reasons I won't bother going into here I need an alternative to VLC on mac. Any ideas? Basically just something that plays whatever I throw at it. Thanks!" – Reddit user
Searching for a free VLC alternative for Mac? Even though you are not satisfying with your VLC media player on Mac anymore, you have to admit that VLC is the top-notch media player that few players can compete with. Therefore, the VLC alternative Mac you select must contains the basic features of VLC media player, and is also compatible with macOS computer.
By ransacking the media player sites, we have found that most popular media players like KMPlayer, GOM Player and Media Player Classic are only for Windows, but there are still some great ones you can choose as the best VLC player alternative Mac.
BTW, VLC is the only choice as of now if you want to play media files on Apple M1 Macs.
5KPlayer is designed as a free video music player like VLC to help people play multimedia files including videos and music smoothly. It can do what VLC can do without third-party help like downloading codec packs to play rare media files, and could also perfectly prevent itself from some VLC errors when playing audio videos like VLC can't play MKV problems, VLC can't play DVDs and VLC audio delay errors.
To help you make the final decision to choose this free VLC media player alternative for Mac, we have a detailed comparison between these two media players. Speaking of supported media formats, VLC alternative Mac 5KPlayer plays nearly all common formats like MKV MP4 AVI FLV WMV MOV DTS MP3 AAC DVD etc and some rare formats like TS M2TS AVCHD etc. According to a test about the 4K UHD video player Mac, it has proved that VLC player alternative Mac 5KPlayer is a wonderful UHD video player that handles 4K UHD HDR H.264/H.265 videos smoothly with stunning clarity on common and retina Mac displays. Besides, it can download videos and convert to MP3 MP4 like VLC easily. The AirPlay and DLNA streaming features also refine 5KPlayer to be the best free VLC media player alternative for Mac that you can choose without regret.
5KPlayer Mac vs. VLC Mac
OS: macOS 10.15 Catalina, macOS 10.14 Mojave, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, macOS 10.12 Sierra, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and earlier.
Interface: Clean and easy to use
Graphic experience: hardware acceleration, CPU-friendly (coming soon)
Supported formats: Almost all
UHD/HD experience: Compatible with H.264/H.265, 4K, 4K HDR, 8K
Online media download & convert: YouTube, Dailymotion, Vevo, Vimeo, etc 300+ sites, and convert to MP3 MP4
Media streaming: AirPlay mirroring, DLNA streaming video music
Subtitles: Add external subtitles
Settings: Adjustable playback speed, full screen mode, screenshot a video, reset aspect ratio, deinterlace video, rotate video, equalize audio, video audio synchronization, etc
OS:macOS 10.16 Big Sur, macOS 10.15 Catalina, macOS 10.14 Mojave, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, macOS 10.12 Sierra, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and earlier.
Interface: Quite complicated
Graphic experience: hardware acceleration, choppy on older Macs
Supported formats: Almost all
UHD/HD experience: Compatible with H.264/H.265, 4K, 4K HDR, 8K, sometimes 4K/8K playback is choppy
Online media download & convert: YouTube (YouTube playlists download needs to install add-ons)
Media streaming: DLNA streaming video music
Subtitles: Download and add subtitles
Settings: Adjustable playback speed, full screen mode, screenshot a video, reset aspect ratio, deinterlace video, rotate video, loop video, flip video, equalize audio, etc
QuickTime Player is the native media player for Mac that can be used as an amazing VLC alternative Mac. You can not only use it to play common videos audio in MOV MP4 MPEG ASF DivX FLV and MP3 WAV AAC etc, but also open CDs and DVDs. Even better, this Mac VLC player alternative allows you to screen recording your Mac, edit movies and extract audio from a video just as VLC media player does on Mac. However, the latest version of QuickTime 7 is limited to only basic playback operations unless you purchase the QuickTime Pro license key to unlock the recording, editing and extracting features, but it is not recommended to do that if you only need a free VLC media player alternative Mac.
Besides, QuickTime Wikipedia tells us that QuickTime 7 is compatible with macOS 10.12 Sierra, so we are not sure if this VLC alternative Mac can work well on Mac computers shipped with macOS High Sierra or Mojave. QuickTime not playing MP4 WMV MKV and QuickTime no video or no sound are also headache things to be solved. If you mind that, you can keep your VLC media player or try other VLC player Mac alternative listed here.
MPlayerX is the Mac version of MPlayer and also a free open media player like VLC. Just throw anything at it, this VLC media player alternative Mac will try its best to give you a clear and smooth playback of media files. Any MKV M4V WMV MP4 AVI MOV MPEG and M4A FLAC APE WAV MP3 can be handled well, and even the 4K HEVC H.265 H.264 videos playback is a piece of cake to MPlayerX because of its hardware decoding function. However, since the last version 1.1.4 in 2016, there is no new update of this VLC Mac alternative. So, it is hard to know whether this media player is powerful enough for new media files like 4K HDR to be played smoothly on new macOS systems.
There are also some media players for Mac like mpv and Moviest that can play common media files on Mac, but they are not that good as a VLC alternative for Mac. Divx Pro for Mac is good enough but it is premium software that we don't recommend. Therefore, 5KPlayer, QuickTime and MPlayerX are the top choices you can select.
Among them, we suggest 5KPlayer as the best free VLC player alternative for Mac regarding its perfect match with VLC in terms of media playback, online video download, media streaming, etc functions. What's more, it helps save you from VLC not working errors forever.
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