Dan Pražák At the beginning of last year, more than a year ago, Apple users began to notice that some newly uploaded YouTube videos could not be played in 4K resolution (2160p) in the desktop version of Safari. At the time, everyone believed that Apple would soon solve this – at first glance small – imperfection and Safari would get the support it needed. Unfortunately, year after year, Mac owners using Safari as their default browser still have no way to play 4K videos on YouTube.
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Amaya Toman The whole problem is based on the VP9 codec, which Google encodes all videos in 4K resolution and above. Unfortunately, Apple does not support the aforementioned codec, even more than a year after YouTube deployed it. Instead, with the arrival of macOS 10.13, and thus also Safari 11, we received HEVC (H.265) support, which is significantly more economical and of higher quality than its predecessor, but YouTube does not use it to encode its videos, and the question is whether it will ever be will start If so, then the whole problem of the absence of 4K video support in Safari would be solved immediately. However, from Google's side, this step appears to be unrealistic for the time being. Especially considering he only recently started using VP9.
Apple's attitude to the whole problem thus seems like one big paradox. The company not only offers 4K and 5K external monitors from LG and promoted them quite significantly after the introduction of the new generation of MacBook Pro, but even itself has iMacs in its portfolio that do not have a display with a resolution other than 4K and 5K. Despite all this, it is not able to provide support for playing 4K videos on the world's largest Internet video platform in its own browser.
It is equally paradoxical that the iPhone has also been able to record videos in 4K for almost a year and a half, and new models even at 60 fps. But if you upload a video directly from your iPhone to YouTube and want to play it in the highest resolution on a computer and a browser from the same company, you're simply out of luck.
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I came across exactly what was described above after buying a 4K monitor from LG, with which I enriched my MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. According to Apple, a great combination, but only until I visited YouTube, I wanted to enjoy the sharp image of the new monitor and enjoy 4K video. In the end, I had no choice but to download Google Chrome and play the video in it.
Unlike Safari, Google's browser supports the VP9 codec on Mac, so using it is essentially the only way to play YouTube videos in 2160p on Apple computers. Opera is similarly suitable, while Firefox, on the other hand, can play a maximum of 1440p. You can check whether your browser supports the VP9 codec <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>.
