Want to watch 4K YouTube videos on Mac? Then it is better not to do that via Safari. In this tip, you can read how to still play YouTube 4K videos on Mac.
Safari can no longer play YouTube 4K videos through the YouTube website. Fortunately, if you want to watch 4K videos, there are other options. In this tip, we discuss three options for watching 4K YouTube on your Mac.
No more YouTube 4K in Safari
Google switched from the paid H.265 codec to the free open source VP9 codec for playing YouTube 4K videos in December 2016. As a result, you can no longer play 4K videos on the YouTube website via the Safari browser.
Even in Safari it is not possible to see if a video can be viewed in 4K display. If you click the settings button in Safari in a YouTube video and choose Quality, the player in Safari never shows a quality higher than 1080p. Not even if a video is uploaded in 4K.
There are a number of ways to still be able to watch in 4K on your Mac.
- Use a different browser: Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera can still play the 4K videos from the YouTube website. Safari is the only known browser that does not support VP9.
- Use the Microsoft Edge browser if you have a dual boot Mac.
- If you really want to look in Safari, use a plugin like 4Ktube Extension (link). This app costs € 2.29 once and lets you automatically forward all available 4K videos to the Chrome browser and view in 4K. You must then have Google Chrome installed.
YouTube 4K becomes 1080p resolution
The open and royalty-free VP9 codec provides cost savings for Google because they no longer have to pay money to use a codec. Safari is the only known browser that does not support VP9, ​​which means that you will see 1080p resolution with these videos. That’s excellent resolution with enough detail, but it’s not 4K.
It is unclear why Apple does not support VP9 in Safari. It may be related to Apple preferring to use an official video compression standard, H.264. Except for the Mac, the same goes for 4K content on the Apple TV and in the iOS apps. On the Apple TV you see with videos that they support 4K, but the playback itself happens at a lower resolution.
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