It's 2019 and Apple STILL doesn't support YouTube 4K playback in Safari - HOW TO FIX!

[Andrew Reid]

Try and watch any new 4K video, trailer or camera test on YouTube in Safari - you will see 1080p or 1440p max!

Until Apple and Google stops ripping off their customers with silly codec wars, here is a solution I've found to get 4K YouTube videos working again in Safari.

Read the full article

[kaylee]

thats great andrew. the whole thing sucks! dont even get me started on the ipad os!!! ?

[Elias]

Actually this plugin for Safari does not allow it to view 4K VP9 video, all it does is show you a link which when you click on it it opens Google Chrome on the same YouTube page you were at to show the video ;-)

And I agree with you, sometimes these companies completely forget about us customers and only think of their internal PR wars...

[Andrew Reid]

Oh dear, does it?! Looks like I am going to have to migrate to Firefox then.

Safari, you lose.

[Mokara]

Apple knows what is best for you. More so than you yourself. Jobs was quite clear on that point.

[Andrew Reid]

Well they helped kill of Flash, and H.265 is a superior codec to VP9, so maybe they do.

[wolf33d]

Yeah that's such a bummer. And they can go f themselves with Chrome. That company lives on selling your data. 
Apple sell you way overpriced HW, at least that's how they live and they can invest in data privacy, which they now use as a selling point. That new iOS 13 apple signin is the real deal.

The worst buyer there is is the guy getting a Huawei smartphone. Puting his money in a data ripping company (google android), and in a IP stealing company (huawei), at the same time ?

The Youtube 4K thing sucks though. And some other Apple limitations suck too

[Video Hummus]

Looks like we won't see a main competitor to HEVC until late 2020 or 2021 when some phones will start shipping with AV1 hardware decoding. AV1 is also substantially slower than HEVC and VP9 for encoding (it's main hindurance atm) but has roughly 20% higher data compression than VP9 or HEVC/H.265 and 50% or more than AVC/H.264.

Hopefully it will take off because it's highly efficient video data compression and royalty free, which means companies and hardware manufactures will have a lower cost of entry for hardware accelerated silicon. Hardware accelerate all the things so to speak—from TV set-top boxes, to cameras, phones, and GPUs.

 

[stratocaster0811]

My understanding is similar to what @Video Hummus mentioned above. One probable reason Apple doesn't support VP9 is that VP9 can't be accelerated in hardware like H.264 or H.265 can with Intel 6th gen and later processors as well as most modern GPUs. That leaves only the option for software decoding. Software decoding of high-resolution VP9 video is pretty resource-intensive and would drain batteries quickly, especially on mobile devices and lightweight laptops. Also, while VP9 is royalty-free, it's developed solely by Google, as opposed to the upcoming AV1 which is being developed as part of a consortium for broader support.

[ac6000cw]

19 hours ago, stratocaster0811 said:

One probable reason Apple doesn't support VP9 is that VP9 can't be accelerated in hardware like H.264 or H.265 can with Intel 6th gen and later processors as well as most modern GPUs

Intel GPU included in Apollo Lake/Kaby Lake  (7th generation) and later CPUs have hardware VP9 decoding support - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding - but I've no idea if Apple support it in their software (I'm a Windows user).

[stratocaster0811]

3 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

Intel GPU included in Apollo Lake/Kaby Lake  (7th generation) and later CPUs have hardware VP9 decoding support - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding - but I've no idea if Apple support it in their software (I'm a Windows user).

Interesting. Didn't know that. I know that the limitation still exists for Apple's ARM chips, but that shouldn't be here nor there. Apple is dropping all native support for VP9 with the current OS update, as it relied the now deprecated 32-bit functionality of QuickTime and is not supported by Apple's current AVFoundation (anything that uses FFMpeg or other codec library, like VLC, will still function). I'm sure there are a lot of details that I'm not privy to as far as licensing and royalties (or lack thereof), but I guess the reasoning now likely lies with that.

[Shura]

Not a proper workaround, there s more to this issue! This paid extension is a scam in the 1st place since all it does is opens the link in another browser which you can do nicely on your own without paying 2+ euros!

more importantly NO OTHER BROWSER I know off except Safari can display proper color in youtube on all modern wide gamut mac displays. No other browser supports color management for video (including chrome and firefox), so you get 4k but you also get weird oversaturated tones. 
bottomline - you cannot watch youtube in HQ on ANY MODERN mac computer, thank you Apple for being so petty!