Looking for PotPlayer on a Mac?
PotPlayer is Windows only, and there is no Mac version. Frame Player runs on both systems with the same features on each, so it can be the one player on a Windows PC and a Mac. Here is what carries over from PotPlayer, what Frame Player adds, and what you would be giving up.
PotPlayer has a loyal following on Windows, and it has earned it: a player that starts quickly, plays nearly anything without a codec pack and has a setting for everything somebody has ever wanted to change. The trouble starts when you get a Mac, or use one at work, because PotPlayer has never been made for one. The usual suggestions are a different player on each system, or one with half of what you were used to. Frame Player is built to be the same player on both — the same features, the same shortcuts and the same settings on Windows and on macOS.
Hovering the seekbar shows the frame you would land on, and the chapter it belongs to.
At a glance
| Compared | Frame Player | PotPlayer |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Windows 10 and 11, macOS on Apple Silicon | Windows 7 to 11, including ARM64 |
| Engine | libmpv, with FFmpeg’s decoders and libplacebo’s renderer | Its own, with built-in codecs; more through OpenCodec |
| Video renderers | mpv’s, the same on both systems | Built-in Direct3D 9 and 11, madVR, MPC Video Renderer |
| Upscaling | Neural-network shaders, on any graphics card | GPU Super Resolution in the D3D11 renderer, NVIDIA RTX Video, madVR’s scalers |
| Frame by frame | Forwards and backwards | Yes |
| A–B repeat | Yes | Yes, with lists of sections and repeat counts |
| Subtitle search | Built in, OpenSubtitles, matched to the exact release | Built in, with online translation |
| Subtitles from speech | — | Whisper, including in real time |
| Cast to a TV | Chromecast, DLNA, and AirPlay on the Mac | Not built in |
| Torrents | Built in, watch while downloading | Not built in |
| Watch together | Built in | Not built in |
| 3D and 360° video | — | Yes |
| Recording and capture | Saves or copies a frame | Video, stream, screen and game capture |
| Licence | GPL-3.0, open source | Freeware, source not published |
Checked against PotPlayer’s site and its update history up to the build of 21 October 2026.
What is the same
It plays what you throw at it. Both players carry their own decoders, so MKV, HEVC, AV1, 10-bit and HDR files play without installing anything, with hardware decoding where the graphics card has it.
The everyday tools. Playback speed, an A–B loop, frame-by-frame stepping, audio and subtitle delay, picking the output device, volume above 100 %, saving the current frame — the things a PotPlayer user reaches for daily are all here, each on a key you can rebind.
Free. Neither costs anything, and neither needs an account.
Where Frame Player goes further
It is on the Mac. The point of this page, but worth spelling out: the same player, with the same shortcuts, on a Windows PC and on a Mac with Apple Silicon. A file you stopped in halfway on one machine is a file you know how to drive on the other.
An interface you do not have to configure first. PotPlayer’s strength is a preferences window with a setting for everything, and the price is finding the one you need. Frame Player keeps what you use on the video and in a context menu, and the rest in one settings sheet. Underneath, it still reads an mpv.conf, so an option the interface does not offer can be written by hand.
Stepping back, made fast. Any player can step forwards; stepping back means decoding a whole group of frames to show the one before. Frame Player measures the file and, where that would be slow, decodes it backwards instead — so holding the key walks back through a scene rather than stalling on each frame. How it works.
The picture, cropped and enlarged without a renderer to set up. Auto crop measures frames across the whole file and removes the black bars baked into the video, each episode measured on its own (how). Upscaling uses neural-network shaders made for live action or for animation, and the panel says when the window is too small for them to make any difference (how). Both work the same on a Mac, where there is no madVR.
The picture panel: brightness and contrast set for the whole playlist, then auto crop — and the window takes the film’s own shape.
Subtitles matched to your release. The search goes by the file’s own fingerprint first, which finds subtitles made for exactly that copy, and a subtitle made for a different frame rate is flagged before you download it — that is the one that drifts further out of sync the longer you watch.
Torrents, casting and watching together. A magnet link plays while it downloads (how); a film goes to a Chromecast or a DLNA television without being re-encoded, and from a Mac to an AirPlay one (how); and a six-character code keeps friends in other places on the same frame (how). None of the three is built into PotPlayer.
Where PotPlayer is the better choice
- Depth of configuration. If you want to choose the decoder per codec, chain video filters or tune the renderer in detail, PotPlayer exposes far more of that than Frame Player ever will.
- madVR and the MPC Video Renderer. Some viewers have settled on madVR’s scaling and tone mapping and want nothing else; PotPlayer can use it, and Frame Player cannot.
- Subtitles from speech. PotPlayer can generate subtitles from the audio with Whisper, even while a live stream plays, and translate subtitles online. Frame Player finds subtitles but does not make or translate them.
- More than files. 3D output for 3D televisions and glasses, 360° video, TV tuners and capture cards, and recording video, streams, the screen or a game. Frame Player plays files and links, and does none of that.
- Older Windows. PotPlayer still installs on Windows 7 and 8.1; Frame Player needs Windows 10 or 11.
And the other Mac players
If the Mac is all you need a player for, there are good ones that are not cross-platform. IINA is a native Mac front end on the same mpv engine as Frame Player, and the one to use on an Intel Mac (compared). VLC runs everywhere and plays nearly anything (compared). Infuse is a polished player built around a library of posters, with a paid Pro tier (compared). IINA and Infuse stop at the Mac, so neither can be the player on the Windows machine next to it — which is the gap Frame Player fills.
Questions
Is there a PotPlayer for Mac?
No. PotPlayer's official site offers Windows installers only — 32-bit, 64-bit and, since August 2026, ARM64 — for Windows 7 to 11. There is no macOS, Linux or mobile version, and running it on a Mac means a Windows virtual machine.
Is Frame Player free, like PotPlayer?
Yes, and it is also open source, under the GPL-3.0, with its code public. PotPlayer is free to use but its source is not published. Frame Player has no account, no subscription and no advertising; the one thing it reports, once, is that it was installed.
Can Frame Player use madVR?
No. madVR is a DirectShow renderer for Windows, and Frame Player's picture comes from mpv's own renderer, libplacebo, on both systems. For enlarging a low-resolution video it has neural-network upscalers of its own, which run on a Mac as well as on Windows.
Does Frame Player step frame by frame, and backwards too?
Yes, forwards with the period key and backwards with the comma. Stepping back is the hard direction for any player, because a video is stored as groups of frames that decode forwards; Frame Player switches to backward decoding on the files where stepping back would otherwise be slow.
Will Frame Player read my PotPlayer settings or playlists?
No. Settings, hotkeys and bookmarks do not carry over. Frame Player's hotkeys are rebindable, J, K and L work as they do in most players, and opening one episode puts the rest of the folder in the queue by itself.
Does Frame Player run on Windows on ARM or an Intel Mac?
Not at the moment. It runs on Windows 10 and 11 on Intel and AMD processors, and on Macs with Apple Silicon. On a Windows ARM laptop PotPlayer has a build; on an Intel Mac, IINA or VLC is the one to use.