How to Play MKV on Mac (macOS Sierra) with an easy way?

• Tweet

• Tweet

This article will introduces top 2 MKV players for Mac, which are totally free so that you can play MKV video on Mac. And in order to still can’t play MKV on Mac with the players, we also provide one smart solution with you. Check it now.

How to play AVI and MKV files on a Mac? First let me say I’m converting to mac soon. Hence these questions. I know VLC player can play AVI and MKV files on a Mac. But I want to use DivX Plus Player cause it has a prettier user interface. Does DivX Plus Player play all AVI and MKV files on a Mac? Does Perian still work on the latest version of Mountain Lion? Does converting AVI and MKV files to MP4 using the free software Handbrake cause severe loss of quality? Does an App exist on the Mac App Store that can play AVI and MKV files? Thank you.

Part 1. Download Free MKV Players for Mac (macOS Sierra included)

QuickTime Player

QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video (MKV, MP4, MOV), media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and interactive panoramic images. The latest version is QuickTime X (10.6) and is available on Mac OS X v10.6.3 Snow Leopard or later.

VideoLAN VLC Media Player

VLC player supports all the video and audio streams including MKV. You need not to install any codecs or filters to play .mkv files.

But we still found many users have “playing MKV on Mac” issues:

I am currently running Mac OS X 10.11. I am having problems playing mkv files. All my MKV files play very choppy. I have used VLC Player, Chroma (downloaded the perian codec), the latest version of Quicktime, and MPlayer. Supposedly MPlayer should handle MKV files the best but odd enuff it is my only video player that wont even play the file. The other players play the file but the video is very choppy. I have a Powerbook G4 1.33 ghz with 512 mb ddr sdram. I know its an old system but it should be able to play these video files. Can anyone give me a fix for this problem? Your help would be greatly appreciated… Thanks

Part 2. How to Fix VLC Won’t Play MKV(HD) File on Mac?

Will QuickTime/VLC play MKV files on Mac? Yes, but not smoothly, common issues are MKV files audio not working on QuickTime/VLC, some MKV files not loading, open successfully, Skipping, Chopping, VLC does not support the audio or video format, etc. If you still prefer to using VLC media player, the following tips of VLC player/QuickTime not playing MKV may help you out, if it still fails to work, try other players.

Set all preferences before back to default, close the player, execute the reset and re-open VLC player. If that doesn’t help, the most straightforward solution to let QuickTime/VLC play MKV files on Mac smoothly is simple, convert MKV in 720P, or HD files to QuickTime/VLC formats with MKV video converter.

Part 3. Recommend Best MKV Video Converter for QuickTime/VLC

To play MKV on Mac with default QT player/VLC, you need Pavtube Video Converter for Mac to convert MKV to MP4, M4V, MOV, AVI, etc. QuickTime and VLC or other media players friendly formats (180+ video and 14+ audio formats supported). And if you wanna convert MKV video to MP4 MOV automatically with default parameters, little human interaction, this professional MKV video converter has done that for you in the preset profiles. So you have no need to worry about this.

Besides converting MKV to QuickTime/VLC video format, this powerful Video Converter also helps to all kinds of AVI, H.265, MKV, MOV, VOB, FLV, WMV, MTS files to QuickTime/VLC more supported video format without any quality loss. Plus, It even can convert WMA, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, M4A, AAC, AC3, RA, AU, 3GA, MKA, DTS, APE, OGG, Opus and more audio to QuickTime/VLC supported MP3. With its bonus “Editor” features of “crop”, “aspect ratio” and “parameter setting” function, you can flexibly adjust the output video file size to make it more suitable. Read review.

Free download MKV Video Converter for Mac

Follow the guide to make all MKV played on Mac with QuickTime or VLC

Step 1: Click “File” icon to load the MKV video or movie.

Step 2: Select output format you need. To play MKV on Mac with QuickTime, you can convert MKV to MP4, M4V, MOV, 3GP, QuickTime supported formats. To play MKV on VLC, you can convert MKV to H.264 MP4.

Step 3: Click “Browse” button to select a destination folder to save output converted MKV file.

Step 4: Press “Convert” button to start converting MKV video on Mac. After the task is finished, you can play converted MKV on Mac with QuickTime or VLC player, or import MKV to iMovie, iTunes, iPhone iPad Android. Enjoy.

Ok, after trying these methods of playing MKV on Mac, you can freely play MKV without the following issues:

MKV is incompatible with Mac default player QuickTime player. VLC player plays MKV on Mac with various problems, including VLC not playing MKV properly, MKV choppy/stutter in VLC, MKV files lagging in VLC….