Perian For El Capitan
Method 1: Using QuickTime Plugin Perian
Mac Quicktime MKV plugin - Perian has a solution to the problem MKV files not playing on Macbook, iMac or Mac mini. With Perian, you can play MKV video movie in HD, SD on any Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, El Capitan, Yosemite, needless of MKV player for Mac. And below are the detailed steps to play MKV on your Mac using QuickTime:
Perian doesn’t work on Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan and there is no upgrade news now. If you are running on Mac OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, you’d better skip this way. Solution 2: Download MPG Player for Mac – VLC.
Method 2: Utilize Perian –a QT component package to handle AVI on Mac issue If you already use QuickTime as your video player, you can still play.avi on a Mac. Perian is a handy free program that allows your Mac to play almost any movie format including AVI files. Perian doesn’t work on Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan and there is no upgrade news now. If you are running on Mac OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, you’d better skip this way. Solution 2: Download MPG Player for Mac – VLC.
- 1. Double-click the MKV file in the Finder.
- 2. Click on the File option and Open it
- 3. Select the MKV file and click Open.
- 4. If a file is an older media format, QuickTime Player may convert it before playing.
The formats that can be played on Mac: QuickTime Movie (.mov), MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v), MPEG-2 (OSX 10.0-10.6 are exclusive), MPEG-1, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AVCHD (OSX 10.0-10.7 are exclusive), AVI ((Motion JPEG only), DV.
Method 2: Using VLC Media Player
VLC Media Player is is a free cross-platform multimedia player that can play most multimedia files, DVDs, etc. It can be downloaded to Windows PC or Mac computer. Here's how you can play MKV on Mac using VLC Media Player
- 1. Go to official App Store on your computer.
- 2. Download and install VLC Media Player.
- 3. Find the MKV file you want to play.
- 4. Load it to VLC Media Player to play it.
Method 3: Using MacX Video Converter
MacX Video Converter Pro helps to convert MKV to MP4, M4V, MOV, AVI, and other video formats that are supported by QuickTime and VLC, or other media players. With the MKV video converter, you can play MKV on Mac freely, solve VLC, Quicktime MKV playing issues, and even add MKV to iTunes, Final Cut Pro, iMovie etc. You don't need to sacrifice any video audio quality during the conversion process thanks to the advanced High Quality Engine. Meanwhile, the Level-3 Hardware Acceleration and Auto Copy technologies deliver a super-fast MKV video converting speed.
The MKV video converting software also enables you to download MKV video free from YouTube, Dailymotion, Vevo, 300+ sites, which means you can watch MKV on Mac with no formats limits or internet connection limits.
How to Convert MKV Video Movie File for Playback on Mac:
- 1. Free download the MKV video converter on Mac and run it on your computer.
- 2. Click 'Add File' icon to navigate the local folder and find the MKV video or movie.
- 3. Select output format from the pop up window, like MP4, AVI, MOV as your needs.
- 4. Click 'RUN' button to start MKV video file conversion process. After the task is finished, you can play converted MKV on Mac with original video quality, or add the MKV video to iTunes movie library with no format limits.
If you wanna convert MKV to MP4:
Just select 'MP4' as output file format. To play MKV on Mac with QuickTime, import MKV to iMovie, convert MKV to AVI, M4V, MOV, 3GP, other supported formats.
If you have problem playing MKV because of its big size:
El Capitan Os X
You can also compress the MKV video using featurs like crop, trim and parameter adjustment. To trim and crop unnecessary parts, click the Edit button. To adjust the resolutions, bit rates, codecs, other settings to shrink MKV videos, click the gear buttton beside the video icon. Then click 'Browse' button to select a destination folder to save output converted MKV file.
* Level-3 Hardware Acceleration - apply GPU acceleration of Intel, Nvidia and AMD to decode and encode MKV H.265/H.264. This feature speed up MKV HEVC conversion to solve MKV HEVC files not playing on Mac error.
* Auto Copy: when you select converting MKV to MOV/MP4 for QuickTime, this feature will move the video/audio files from MKV container to another container without re-encoding. This tech not only ensures a super-fast processing speed but also keeps 1:1 original quality of HD MKV files.
Method 4: Using MKV Player for Mac
What plays MKV files on Mac computer perfectly? Not QuickTime, not VLC, what I'm going to recommend here is a newbie, 5KPlayer, a fantastic MKV video player for Mac that I came across accidentally on forum.
It plays MKV video in 720p, 1080p, or 4K UHD on macOS Sierra, Mac El Capitan, Yosemite, OS X 10 without freezing or buffering. It takes no time to fully load MKV file. The player for MKV also plays AVI, FLV, MOV, MTS, MP4, MP3 music, AAC, to name just a few.
Another feature that impresses me is that it is able to airplay MKV video movie from Mac to Mac, from Mac to Apple TV. This means that you can watch MKV on Mac even on airplay supported TV with no limits.
How to Fix: VLC Won't Play MKV File on macOS
Will VLC play MKV files on Mac? Yes, but not smoothly, common issues are MKV files audio not working on 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 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 VLC play MKV files on Mac smoothly is simple, convert MKV in 720P, or HD files to VLC formats with MKV video converter. VLC player reads several formats on Mac OS X, including MP4, QuickTime format, 3GP, VOB, TS, AVI, FLV, ASF, Ogg, WAV, , MPS, etc.
Bonus Tip
* Apple official applications on Mac such as QuickTime Player works with many kinds of audio and video formats, like AVI, FLV, DivX, and many more.
* Perian is not perfect, though. It only works with QT 10 or lower for it stops being updated. You may still have some problems when playing MKV on Mac. Some users are crying that they downloaded Perian, and MKV are played on QT but with no sound. And it has to read the MKV file before playing, you can not fast forward file that has not been fully loaded.
* It's better to use MKV video converter to convert the file first and watch MKV on Mac freely, or jump to method 3, resort to a MKV player for Mac.
* Catalina (macOS 10.15) is killing off 32-bit apps. Many legacy versions of Mac apps like GarageBand, and Perian are unsupported. So to play MKV with success on your new mac operating system, make sure it is new and upgrade for the 64-bit computer.
Typically you’ll encounter MKV files with Bluray rips or video exported from an HD stream, and you might have discovered you can’t play MKV on Mac easily. That’s because MKV won’t open in QuickTime, the default video player app in Mac OS X. Not to worry though, MKV files can be played on a Mac easily, just check out the top 3 ways to play MKV on Mac(El Capitan included).
Method 1. Play MKV in QuickTime with Perian installed

Perian is one of the most popularly used free QuickTime components to provide native support to a wide variety of file formats such as MPG. What you should note is that Perian can be only used on Mac OS Snow Leopard. Moreover the latest version of Perian, 1.2.3 requires installation of QuickTime 7 which is not available for other Mac OS apart from Snow Leopard such as Mountain Lion.
Note: Perian doesn’t work on Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan and there is no upgrade news now. If you are running on Mac OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, this way can’t work for you.
Method 2. Download MKV Player for Mac
With a versatile video player installed in your Mac, you can play any video without format limitation concerns on Mac. The most famous are VLC and MPlayer OSX. Both of them are excellent and free multimedia players for Mac users. Apart from MKV, they can deal with many of the video formats unknown to QuickTime.
Tip: If you don’t want to install too many players on your Mac and want to watch MKV videos with iTunes or QuickTime player, you can take a Mac video converter to convert your MKV files to Mac compatible format. So, we go to the thrid solution- convert MKV to Mac format.
Method 3. Convert MKV to Mac compatible format
Since MKV format is not supported by neither QuickTime or iTunes, converting MKV to MOV will surely be your best choice. In this case, a versatile video converter is in need. Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac is such an excellent program that combines video converter, video editor, video player. It is fully compatible with all Mac OS including El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, etc. With it, you can convert MKV videos (HD MKV) to Mac playable files MOV, MP4 with fast speed and high quality. Apart from MKV, it can also convert various other popular video formats including AVI, VOB, WMV, etc to Mac compatible video/audio formats. Read on to have a look at how to convert MKV videos to Mac friendly video.
Step-by-step Guide to Convert MKV Videos on Mac
1. Import MKV videos > Launch the best MKV Converter for Mac. You can directly drag local .mkv videos into the program window or click “Add” button in the bottom left to import .mpg files.
2. Choose Mac friendly format > Click Format bar and select “MOV” or “MP4” from the “Common Video”, which are fully compatible with Mac OS X. QuickTime Movie Format” format is also an optimal choice.
P.S. This Video Converter for El Capitan also helps you to convert videos to mobile devices supported formats, such as iPhone, iPad, iPod, Samsung Galaxy, etc.
Perian For El Capitan Os
3. Start conversion > In the end, you just need to click the “Convert” button start the conversion. When the converting process ends, you can open output folder to check and play converted MKV videos on your Mac(El Capitan) with ease.