Fourth macOS Big Sur beta adds support for 4K YouTube playback in Safari

In the latest macOS Big Sur beta, Apple has officially added support for viewing 4K YouTube videos in Safari.

Previously, users who wanted to view 4K content on a Mac needed to use a third-party browser like Google Chrome. That's because of Apple's refusal to support the Google VP9 video codec.

On Tuesday, Apple introduced support for the VP9 codec in the Mac version of Safari in the fourth beta version of macOS Big Sur. According to Apple's release notes simply state that the fourth beta adds "support for 4K HDR playback of YouTube Videos."

Alongside macOS, Apple's other 2020 software updates also add support for the codec and 4K YouTube video playback. That means users will be able to natively stream 4K YouTube clips in Safari on iOS 14, tvOS 14, and macOS Big Sur.

While 4K videos can be seen in their full resolution on Macs and Apple TV devices with the appropriate displays, the resolution of even the latest iPhones and iPads top out below 4K quality.

Safari is getting other new additions in macOS Big Sur and Apple's other software updates, including native support for HDR videos and WebP images.

The lack of VP9 support has been a sticking point for users since Google introduced the codec, particularly since the Mountain View company has refused to encode clips in other Apple-friendly codecs. Since the introduction of VP9, users have been stuck with viewing YouTube in 1080p or 720p.

Of course, Apple's 2020 slate of software updates are still in their beta testing phase, so it's unclear if support for VP9 will remain when they release to the public in the fall.

4 Comments

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

About 4 years ago

And people call Apple a bully. Google comes up with its own, proprietary codec and then refuses to support the industry standard H.265, finally bullying Apple into using it. Scratch your ass, Google.

cropr 1142 comments · 11 Years

About 4 years ago

lkrupp said:

And people call Apple a bully. Google comes up with its own, proprietary codec and then refuses to support the industry standard H.265, finally bullying Apple into using it. Scratch your ass, Google.

Your statement about VP9 is incorrect. VP9 is an open source, royalty free encoding/decoding library, so by definition it is not proprietary. Google has contributed a lot to the code , but VP9 is not owned by Google. H.265 is a commercial development, requiring royalty payments when used.

Apple is a member of the consortium of H265 but is not involved in the VP9 development. This explains why Apple is promoting H265 and why it has been reluctant to support VP9.

While H.264 is de facto the standard for encoding HDTV , it remains to be seen if H265 can make the same claim for 4K. The fact that Apple now include support for VP9, while Youtube is not including support for H.265, shows rather the opposite.

bigmushroom 87 comments · 11 Years

About 4 years ago

lkrupp said:

And people call Apple a bully. Google comes up with its own, proprietary codec and then refuses to support the industry standard H.265, finally bullying Apple into using it. Scratch your ass, Google.

VP9 is an open-source and royalty-free codect and the basis for Av1 which is also royalty free and Apple is a founding member of the Alliance for Open Media that developed this codec (and which Apple committee to support - if you support AV1 you might as well support VP9 which is quite similar).

H265 is a standard but you have to pay royalties to at least 3 patent pools and the royalty fees are much, much higher than for H264. That is the reason why streaming media companies don't use it - Netflix, Amazon etc all use h264 and plan to switch to AV1.

fastasleep 6450 comments · 14 Years

About 4 years ago

lkrupp said:

And people call Apple a bully. Google comes up with its own, proprietary codec and then refuses to support the industry standard H.265, finally bullying Apple into using it. Scratch your ass, Google.

For how constantly angry you are at others, you sure are wrong a lot.