What's changed.

A playlist release: open playlists from VLC, IINA, Windows Media Player, and more, turn them into Collections that keep their order, and export your picks as a playlist.

• + Open a playlist and its videos fill the grid in playlist order. VidViewer reads M3U and M3U8, VLC’s XSPF, PLS, Windows Media Player, Zune, ASX, Media Player Classic, and PotPlayer playlists, including ones made on a PC.
• + If VidViewer hasn’t opened the folder a playlist’s videos are in, it asks once and remembers. Forget that access anytime in General settings. A playlist on a drive that isn’t connected says so instead of asking.
• + Turn a playlist into a Collection to pick, rate, label, and export its videos in order: File → New Collection from Playlist…, or Add Playlist in the New Collection sheet. Add more playlists later from Manage Sources.
• + Save as Playlist in Export takes your selection to VLC, IINA, or any other player.

• + Collections follow their folders when you rename or move them, or when a network drive comes back under a different name. Picks, ratings, and labels come along. If a folder is in the Trash or can’t be opened, the Collection says so, and dragging the folder in again fixes it.
• + Removing a source from a Collection can be undone.

• ~ File → Open Recent opens a folder with its saved access, so its videos show up.
• ~ A duplicated Collection keeps its folder access instead of asking again.
• ~ Dropping playlists, folders, and files together onto a Collection adds all of them.

A formats release: MKV and WebM play right in the grid, Blu-ray movie soundtracks play, and older formats like Xvid, DivX, and Flash video are converted once in the background.

• + MKV and WebM play in the grid, with everything you are used to: smooth loops, ⌘-scrubbing, speed controls, slideshows, stills, Get Info, and Export. Big movie files, even multi-gigabyte Blu-ray remuxes, start playing in under a second.
• + Blu-ray movie soundtracks play, including lossless TrueHD and 7.1 surround tracks. When a file has several audio tracks, VidViewer picks the one in your language when it can.
• + Older videos play too. Xvid and DivX AVIs, VP8 WebMs, Theora, and old Flash videos are converted once in the background, then play like any other video. A cell shows Converting with its progress while it works. Converted copies live in VidViewer’s own cache, never next to your files; see the space used, or clear it, in Playback settings.
• + Videos that can’t play now say why, naming the format (WMV, DivX 3, DTS audio, and so on), instead of showing a black tile.
• + Loading a video now shows a still from it with its progress, instead of a blank tile.

• ~ Scrubbing in an expanded video now carries back to the grid when you close it.
• ~ Worked around a rare crash inside macOS’s video framework that could happen when seeking under heavy disk load.
• ~ Hardened against damaged and unusual files: a corrupted MKV header, a drive unplugged mid-conversion, or a file with an impossible date can no longer crash the app or leave a broken copy behind.

A smoother-playback release: seamless looping, optional next-page preloading, remembered stills, and less dark time between videos.

• + Seamless looping. Clips now play straight through the loop point, without the hitch they used to make every time they wrapped around.
• + Preload the next page. A new setting (off by default, in Playback settings) opens the videos on the next page in the background, so turning to it is an instant cut. It uses more memory and power, and pauses itself in Low Power Mode or when your Mac is under pressure.
• + Videos appear on their first frame. Grid cells now fade in once they have a picture to show, instead of fading in to black and popping in a moment later.
• + Stills remembered between launches. VidViewer saves video stills to disk, so a slow-loading cell shows its still instead of a placeholder, and Export shows them right away on later visits. The cache is capped at 256 MB, with a Clear button.
• + Smoother slideshows. The next video starts opening as the current one fades out, so each cell spends less time dark between videos.
• + Faster grid growth. Growing the grid after shrinking it reuses the video players it set aside, so the new cells show video sooner.

• ~ Right-click menus on grid videos stay open. Submenus like Rate, Labels, and Add to Collection no longer close on their own when a notice, the save indicator, or a folder scan updates. A clip that ends while a menu is open keeps looping instead of freezing.
• ~ When a playing cell switched to a video with a resume point or a random start, it briefly played from the beginning before jumping. Playback now waits until the video is at its start point.

A playback-performance release: faster page flips, cleaner resume, and the first build for macOS 27.

• + Much faster page turns. Flipping pages, shuffling with R, and slideshow changes do far less work up front, so a full grid appears noticeably sooner without the hitch as it loads.
• + Resume without the flash. A video you had already partly watched now appears right where you left off, instead of fading in at the start, freezing, then jumping.
• + Seamless expand: clicking a cell picks up exactly where it was playing in the grid.
• + Lighter grid rendering: less memory, and the app stays responsive while a page loads.
• + Built against the macOS 27 SDK, so it takes on the current system look on macOS 27.

• ~ The expanded view no longer flashes the first frame before jumping to where it should start.
• ~ The buffering placeholder can no longer get stuck over a playing video when a clip loops mid-stall.

• ~ The green full-screen button behaves properly now: the window stays in full screen while you page through videos, shuffle, or navigate.
• + Full-screen the whole grid whenever you like.

• ~ Fixed a bug where resizing the window smaller, then dragging it, could snap it back to full size.

Reliability and performance improvements across the app.

• ~ A smarter Random shuffle spreads clips out, so similar-named ones no longer land side by side.

• ~ Dropping a folder on VidViewer, whether onto the Dock icon or into the window, now always opens it fresh instead of occasionally reopening whatever was loaded before.
• ~ Removed the "Reopen the last collection at launch" setting. VidViewer always lands on the home screen now.

• ~ Move (in Export) now keeps your ratings, labels, and hidden flags.
• ~ "Save Picks as New Collection" opens correctly, and reopens its files on later launches.
• ~ Your most recent pick or rating is saved even if you quit right away.
• ~ Restoring a backup no longer reverts an open collection.

• ~ Turning off audio focus on hover no longer silences the grid.
• ~ Fixes for slideshow cell glitches, contact sheets on very large selections, and a batch of under-the-hood memory, security, and reliability issues.

• + A new Slideshow button, just right of the dice, auto-cycles your grid: shuffle or sort, pick the grid size, advance on a timer or when each clip finishes playing, cascade the cells in a wave or change them all at once, and loop or stop once everything has been shown. Works in Watch and Collections.
• + Run a slideshow immersively in true full-screen (its own Space, hidden menu bar and Dock), or keep it windowed. Press Stop or ESC to fade smoothly back to your grid.
• + Your slideshow settings are remembered for next time, with a one-tap Reset to Defaults.

• ~ Snappier library scanning and smoother playback, especially with large 4K files. File metadata is read once per file, and the grid reuses its video players.
• ~ A pile of slideshow edge cases hardened along the way: leaving a slideshow can no longer strand the window in full-screen, and it no longer disturbs your mute or play state.

• + Recent collections now appear on the home screen: click to open, hover to remove one from the list, or right-click to delete. Deleting now asks first.
• + Choose how many recent collections show, or hide them entirely, in Settings > General, just like recent folders.

• + Press ⌘← or ⌘→ to jump to the previous or next video without leaving the expanded view. Plain ← and → still skip 10 seconds within the clip.

• ~ The Export screen does far less redundant work per interaction on large collections.

The first Mac App Store release.

• + Fullscreen right-click menus (Add to Collection, Rate, Labels) now open correctly.
• + Refined onboarding, now using the translucent app icon.

• + Clear feedback when a dropped folder has no videos in it.
• + The grid autofits to your content, with smoother Dock-drop behavior.
• + VidViewer asks before replacing or appending when you open more content.
• + The expanded view collapses on its own when you append new content.

• + The Rename dialog now accepts spaces.
• + Dropping onto the Dock loads videos reliably, and the paused-video system menu no longer pops up.

• + Page navigation cluster: jump to first, previous, next, or a specific page from the bottom bar, with keyboard shortcuts.
• + Click-and-hold speed controls: hold the turtle or hare button to pick any rate from 0.1x to 4x without opening Settings.
• + Rename a video file in place from the right-click menu. Picks, ratings, labels, Finder tags, and saved playback position all follow the new name.
• + Add to Collection from casual mode: right-click a video, choose Add to Collection, and it becomes a source and gets auto-picked.
• + Per-cell unmute: right-click a single cell to unmute just that video, independently of Mute All.
• + Auto-tag collections by media info: opt in and VidViewer tags clips by resolution, codec, framerate, and orientation, like 4K, HEVC, 60fps, and Vertical.
• + Changing the sort now returns you to page 1, so you land at the top of the new ordering instead of being stranded.
• + Skip arrows in the expanded view are now real, clickable buttons.

• ~ Fixed a rare data-loss issue when saving picks in quick succession.
• ~ Restore-from-backup now shows a clear alert if something goes wrong, instead of failing quietly.
• ~ Finder tags are now clearly separated from your custom collection tags and labels in every menu.

A big follow-up to the first release: a full visual refresh plus new curation and playback features.

• + New deep-indigo brand and app icon, with a refreshed look throughout.
• + Recents launcher: recently opened folders appear as pills on the home screen. Pin favorites, remove entries, or set how many to keep.
• + Get Info panel: right-click a video (or press I) for resolution, codec, duration, frame rate, bitrate, size, and dates.
• + Open from the Dock: drop files or folders onto the Dock icon to open them right away.

• + True random sampling: Random draws a fresh hand from across your whole library, not just the next page.
• + Start each video at a random position, handy for sampling a large library.
• + Expanded-view upgrades: navigate with arrows or Random, collapse back to the page you were on, switch grid size while expanded, and lock the watched video into the grid.

• ~ Fixed an occasional black frame when moving between videos in the expanded view.
• ~ Toolbar mute and play controls now act on the expanded video while it is open.
• ~ Single-window app: no more duplicate windows reopening with the same state.