Apple released the fourth developer beta for macOS 11 Big Sur yesterday, inching closer towards the public beta, which should be released sooner rather than later. The firm released the public beta for iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14, but the macOS public betas are still listed as “Coming soon”.
The fourth developer beta for macOS 11 Big Sur finally lets users watch YouTube videos in 4K resolution on Safari. As reported earlier, this ability also made it to the Apple TV 4K running tvOS 14, owing to the company supposedly now supporting the VP9 codec (via 9to5Mac) used by YouTube for its 4K video libraries. However, it is not clear if the change is also due to YouTube implementing the AV1 codec for higher resolution videos, something that the company has been working on for a while now.
Up until now, Mac users had to use Chrome or other browsers to be able to watch YouTube videos in resolutions higher than FullHD (1080p). In addition to bringing support for 4K YouTube videos on Safari 14, Apple is said to also be bringing support for WebP images and HDR, letting users stream HDR videos on Netflix from the browser.
The changes should be available to all Mac users when Apple releases macOS 11 Big Sur later this fall. The addition of the ability to stream 4K videos on a Mac using Safari will be a welcome addition for users of Apple’s browser. The ability should also make it to iPhones and iPads with iOS 14 and iPadOS 14.