Best MKV Players for Windows/Mac

MKV is a multimedia container format which can incorporate audio, video, and subtitles into a single file. Even if those elements use different types of encoding. For example, you could have a MKV file that contains H.264 video and something like MP3 or AAC for audio. However, as MKV isn't an industry standard, not all media players support it, even though support has grown rapidly. The following part will share you some of the best 10 MKV players for you to play all MKV content on both Windows and Mac.

Review of 10 best MKV Players for Windows/Mac

1. VLC Media Player (for Windows/Mac)

One of the great choice for playing MKV files is VLC media player - mostly because it has built-in support and doesn't require that you install anything else. Downloading and installing the program is easy if you follow these directions. Begin by navigating to the official download page at videolan.org. Beware of going anywhere else, because a lot of crapware vendors have fake VLC download sites.

Related article: Play MKV on VLC

2. KMPlayer (for Windows only)

KMPlayer (K-Multimedia Player) is a media player for Windows which can play a large number of formats including VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, FLV and QuickTime. But KMPlayer is supported by advertisements, including ads in homepage, a dedicated side panels, and pop-ups.

3. SMPlayer

SMPlayer is a free open source media player that can play virtually all video and audio formats with its built-in codecs: AVI, MP4, MKV, MPEG, MOV, WMV, MP3, WAV, AAC, AC3, M4A, WMA... It doesn't need any external codecs.

SMPlayer can also play, search and download Youtube videos. It can find and download subtitles from opensubtitles.org as well. It includes a thumbnail generator that allows to create an image with preview thumbnails of the video. One of the most interesting features is its capability to resume playback, so if you start to watch a movie but you have to leave... don't worry, when you open that movie again it will be resumed at the same point you left it.

4. FreeSmith Video Player (for Windows only)

FreeSmith Video Player is a clean and free player for Windnows users which plays most audio/video/DVD multimedias easily and smoothly.

What's more, FreeSmith Video Player is the ideal Blu-ray DVD Movie Player for Windows users to enjoy vast array of Blu-ray Disc movies freely on local computers. Besides, it also supports play most popular videos such as (SD) video formats (including AVI, MPEG, WMV, DivX, MP4, XviD, 3GP, FLV) and high-definition (HD) formats (like MPEG2-TS, AVCHD, MKV, etc). FreeSmith Video Player also empowers you enjoy audio files such as MP3 freely!

5. MPlayer (for Windows & Mac)

MPlayer is an open source and free media player. It can be run on many operating systems like Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Unix-like, etc. It is able to play many media formats including physical media (e.g. CDs, DVDs, Video CDs, Blu-rays), Container formats (e.g. 3GP, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV, MP4, OGG, RealMedia), audio formats, subtitle formats, image formats and protocols. For Mac users, download the MKV player for Mac - MPlayer on its official sit with just a few clicks.

6. Kodi (for Windows & Mac)

Kodi is another good app to play MKV video, it's simple interface focuses on media use and it makes a great media console in general. To get the most out of Kodi, copy any MKV video files to the Movies directory in the users home folder and you'll be able to quickly find them within Kodi.

7. Plex (for Windows & Mac)

Plex is very similar to XBMC and works as well. Although it is generally a great media center app, the most recent update took a strange turn and the interface is more confusing than it needs to be. Nonetheless, it still plays MKV files quite well, if you're going to use it drag and drop the MKV video onto the Plex icon to load the movie, otherwise trying to navigate through Plex's confusing new menus will likely leave you frustrated and lost.

8. DAPlayer

DAPlayer is a sleek, powerful free video player that works with hundreds of formats, including high definition video. It comes with more than 400 audio and video codecs already built into the player, so that you can play virtually any kind of video on your computer without the hassle of having to look for and download missing codecs.

Apart from video files in your hard drive, DAPlayer also works with DVDs and Blu-rays. Thanks to the support for high definition video (AVCHD, MKV, H264 and more) DAPlayer lets you enjoy your favorite movies and TV shows in glorious full HD 1080p.

9. Divx Player

DivX Player is the first of its kind, award-winning software offering free HEVC playback, including Ultra HD (4K), a must-have for those who appreciate high-quality video. Player is also optimized for movies, TV shows and web video clips in the Internet's most popular formats, including AIV, DIVX, MKV, MP4 and more.

10. 5K Player

5KPlayer is a free .mkv player. This MKV video player is made for bringing you an user-friendly and customer-oriented Matroska video playback solution. With easy to use interface, you can easily play MKV movie videos no matter you are an experienced software master or not. Tremendous video playback capacity allows you not only play MKV files, but also other videos with large-scale formats, such as M2TS, AVCHD, MOD, H.264, MPEG-4, AVI, MOV, WMV, FLV, etc.

Best MKV player assistant to fix all MKV file entertainment issue

Still fail to play certain MKV files such as 4K H.265 with above listed MKV players? Or wish to load MKV files into the default media player app such as Windows Media Player or QuickTime which not offer direct MKV file playback. The good news is that you can download a powerful MKV Converter such as Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate, a cross-platform application which is available on both Windows and Mac platform (get Mac version).

The program has full importing support for all 4K/2K/HD/SD MKV files encoded with various different video codec and audio codec. Thanks to its batch conversion mode, you can load multiple MKV files into the application for conversion at one time. With this simple to use application, you can easily compress and transcode 4K/HD MKV files to any of your desired media player software supported video file formats listed above.

To get better output file quality, you can flexibly adjust output profile parameters including video codec, resolution, bit rate, frame rate, audio codec, bit rate, sample rate, channels, etc as you like to make a balance between the video quality and the file size.