VLC media player adds native support for Apple's M1 Macs

Users running the latest version on the new MacBook Air, Mac mini and the 13-inch MacBook Pro will now be able to use the player at full speed and benefit from the new processor’s power savings

Popular video player VLC is now available on Apple's recent M1 MacBooks (Videolan)

The world's most popular open-source video player, VLC Media Player has gained native support for Apple Silicon Macs and Big Sur, bringing optimisations to performance and power use while watching videos that traditionally consume a lot of power.

The Videolan team announced on Twitter that support for Apple's M1 MacBooks arrived with the release of version 3.0.12.1 of the popular media player, which means that anyone running the latest version on the new MacBook Air, Mac mini and the 13-inch MacBook Pro will now be able to use the player at full speed and benefit from the new processor's power savings.

VLC 3.0.12 is now out!

Support for Apple Silicon (Mac M1) and Big Sur, improvements for DASH, RIST, Bluray support, fixes for macOS audio, Windows GPU, crashes and security issues.https://t.co/3zAr8VgzbL pic.twitter.com/TAU8ayKEBU

— VideoLAN (@videolan) January 18, 2021

Native support for VLC on Apple Silicon means that the player can now plug into the M1's graphics processing unit to access accelerated decoding capabilities. This means that your high-resolution 4K and 8K videos should now play flawlessly, while other features like 10-bit HDR should also work without any issues.

But performance isn't the only area where VLC users will likely benefit from native code execution. The Apple M1 chips are extremely energy-efficient, given the huge efficiency gains from a 5nm fabrication process. A native VLC player will also mean that power usage will drop considerably once you update the app and play content while your MacBook is off the charger.

On Monday, we reported that Microsoft's had added support for Apple's latest processor in the beta channel of its Edge browser over the weekend, bringing with it native support for many functions that would not be completely supported when using ‘emulation' software like Apple's Rosetta. Rosetta is a translation process that allows users to run apps that contain 64-bit instructions for Intel processors on Apple M1 Macs.