Use QuickTime Plugin to Play MKV files on Mac. Perian, a QuickTime plugin, can help in playing. VLC is the longtime king of video players, and it’s easily one of the best video players on the.

Why QuickTime can’t play MKV video on Mac?

MKV files are usually high quality videos compressed within a Mastroska container format. As a free, open source container format, MKV is not a specific type of file and there is no single codec for videos with .mkv externsions. That’s the reason why people usually feel frustrated when they try to play an MKV file in QuickTime. Not to worry though, MKV files can be played on a Mac (OS X Yosemite included) easily, here are three simple solutions that will allow you to play MKV on your computer.

Solution 1: Convert MKV to QuickTime (.mov) for Free Playback
Solution 2: Get QuickTime Component: Perian
Solution 3: Switch to Other Media Player for MKV Playback My passport for mac drivers.

Solution 1: Convert MKV to QuickTime (.mov) for Free Playback (Recommended)

If you have a lot of MKV files and want to play them on more players like the iPhone, iPad or iPod, you’d better convert the MKV to other formats like the MP4, MOV, M4V or etc. To do the job, you can use Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac, which is an easy-to-use yet powerful video converter app for Mac OS X (Yosemite, Mavericks included). With it, you can fast convert MKV to MOV video without quality loss, and the program guarantee the output files without audio and video out of sync issues. This shareware also enables you to convert an MKV to any popular video format for various players, devices and applications. See below how to change MKV to QuickTime .mov format.

Convert to MKV to QuickTime for playback in steps

Step 1: Download, install the MKV to QuickTime Converter. As long as you launch it, the following main interface will pop up. Now you can click on “Add” button to import MKV files which you want to convert into this program.

Tip: If you want to join all the MKV files you loaded as a single file, you can tick checkbox “Merge into one file”.

Step 2: Hit the drop-down list of “Format” to choose “Common Video -> MOV – QuickTime (*.mov)” as the target format. This MKV to MOV Converter also offers the QuickTime Movie Format for you. Just choose it.

Tips – Set advanced settings

By clicking the Settings icon, you can adjust video and audio parameters like codec, bit rate, frame rate, sample rate, etc., in that way, you can take charge of the size and quality of the output MOV files. In principle, the larger input values, the better output quality, but the corresponding larger file size.

Step 3: As soon as all the above settings are completed, you can press “Convert” button to start MKV to MOV conversion. You can follow the conversion process via the pop-up windows.

After conversion is done, simply click “Completed” to back to main interface, and click “Open” button to find generated MOV videos and then play with QuickTime player flawlessly.

Download Quicktime Player 10 Mac

Solution 2: Get QuickTime Component: Perian

Download Quicktime Player For Mac

The QuickTime player is mostly used in Mac OS, if you don’t want to use the first solution to convert the MKV files to QuickTime compatible formats, you can try this solution, but no 100% work guarantee.

Perian, is a great open-source QuickTime component that allows playback of different video formats that cannot be played natively on your Mac computer. If you want to use QuickTime as your main video player, you may choose to download Perian because it provides the necessary codecs or components that will allow you to play MKV on Mac. If you have QuickTime 7, you may be glad to discover that it can actually play MKV files without needing any additional plug-ins and codecs.

What you need to know before downloading Perian:

• The latest version 1.2.3 of Perian doesn’t work on Mac OS X Mavericks and Yosemite because Perian requires installation of quicktime 7, which doesn’t exist for Mavericks. It also doesn’t work on Mac OS X Mountain Lion.
• With a Mac running Mac OS X 10.7, say, Lion, you have to downgrade to the previous version, say 1.2.2. The version of 1.2.3 of Perian does not support QuickTime 10 in Lion and fails to fix the loss of audio after one second in xvid files with ac3.
• Before installing Perian, you need to remove all QuickTime Components installed on your Mac, like FFusion, Xvid Delegate, 3ivX, DivX, DivX Decoder, XviD, msmpeg4v1, msmpeg4v2, AviImporter, EX_M4S2, Casio AVI Importer, AC3 Codec, and MatroskaQT.
• For a Mac running Lion or Mountain Lion, converting MKV video to QuickTime is highly recommended.

Solution 3: Switch to Other Media Player for MKV Playback

The VLC media player, is an excellent open-source media player that is known for supporting a wide range of audio and video files. Unlike other media players which have limited format-support, you will be surprised that VLC can play a video or audio file that you didn’t even know existed. If your OS is Snow Leopard or higher, installing VLC is definitely a good choice especially if you only plan on watching MKV files on your computer.