How to build mpv & mpv.app on an Apple silicon Mac

readme.md

Preparations

Before you can build mpv & mpv.app on an Apple silicon Mac, there's a couple of required dependencies you'll need to install if you haven't already:

1. Go to System Preferences > Software Update. If there's anything there to update, do it.

2. If you don't have the Xcode Command Line Tools installed, run xcode-select --install and select Install on the prompt that appears.

3. If you don't have Homebrew installed, follow the instructions here.

4. If you don't have all of mpv's dependencies installed, run brew install --build-from-source --only-dependencies mpv && brew install libplacebo.

You'll also need a local copy of the mpv repo, which you can get by running git clone https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv.

You can now run the attached script to build mpv & mpv.app on an Apple silicon Mac yourself. Just make sure to run it from the root directory of the cloned repo.

Static Build

If you want to bundle a static build of mpv.app, perform these steps following the ones above.

1. Run brew install dylibbundler.

2. Run the script from the root directory of the cloned repo, but append --static to the command, like ./build-mpv_silicon.sh --static.

---

Updating

Going forward, you can update your local copy of the repo by running the following commands from its root directory:

git reset --hard
git clean --force -d -x
git pull origin master

build-mpv_silicon.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Builds mpv & mpv.app on Apple silicon Macs.
# Run this script from the root directory of the mpv repo.

# if anything fails, gtfo
set -ex

meson setup build
meson compile -C build
# test the binary we just built
./build/mpv --version

./TOOLS/osxbundle.py --skip-deps build/mpv
if [[ $1 == "--static" ]]; then
	dylibbundler --bundle-deps --dest-dir build/mpv.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/ --install-path @executable_path/lib/ --fix-file build/mpv.app/Contents/MacOS/mpv
	# test the app binary to make sure all the dylibs made it okay
	./build/mpv.app/Contents/MacOS/mpv --version
fi

pkg-config

Thank you, but it's still not working. Same issues...

doriandiaconu@Dorians-MacBook-Pro mpv % ./script.sh --static   
+ meson setup build
The Meson build system
Version: 1.5.0
Source dir: /Users/doriandiaconu/mpv
Build dir: /Users/doriandiaconu/mpv/build
Build type: native build
Project name: mpv
Project version: 0.38.0-UNKNOWN
C compiler for the host machine: cc (clang 16.0.0 "Apple clang version 16.0.0 (clang-1600.0.23.1)")
C linker for the host machine: cc ld64 1115.7.2
Host machine cpu family: aarch64
Host machine cpu: aarch64
Program python3 found: YES (/opt/homebrew/bin/python3)
Found pkg-config: YES (/opt/homebrew/bin/pkg-config) 0.29.2
Did not find CMake 'cmake'
Found CMake: NO
Run-time dependency libavcodec found: NO (tried pkgconfig and framework)

meson.build:22:13: ERROR: Dependency "libavcodec" not found, tried pkgconfig and framework

A full log can be found at /Users/doriandiaconu/mpv/build/meson-logs/meson-log.txt
doriandiaconu@Dorians-MacBook-Pro mpv % brew install pkg-config
Warning: pkg-config 0.29.2_3 is already installed and up-to-date.
To reinstall 0.29.2_3, run:
  brew reinstall pkg-config

The message here is pretty clear, libavcodec is not found. Try installing that. In general, follow the above instructions and install all dependencies.
Take no offense, but I suggest you try ChatGPT for assistance as these all seem straightforward enough issues

you have not installed most of the dependencies, in this case ffmpeg, check that all the requires dependencies are properly installed, check here

I also created a script for this: https://github.com/pxia/mpv-macos-build

Ho anche creato uno script per questo: https://github.com/pxia/mpv-macos-build

Has anyone tried this script on Mac OS 14.5 and can tell me if it works?

@tano70 yes i've built it myself on 14.5

Works perfectly on Sonoma 14.6.1

Note that the mpv project itself provides automatic "test builds" of mpv for various systems and architectures, including an ARM build for macOS. They can be found here: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/actions/workflows/build.yml?query=event:push+branch:master
and are also linked on the project's website here: https://mpv.io/installation/

In my own limited experience the ARM build appears quite stable, even with gpu-next enabled.

@hvirta awesome, thanks for the heads up!

@tano70sì, l'ho costruito io stesso su 14.5

thanks!

Hi, can anyone tell me how I would uninstall if I followed the instructions in the main post? is it simply deleting the mpv folder or is there more to it? Thanks

This worked fine for me on MacOS 15.0.

@hvirta - thanks, good to know after so many years we can finally download an Apple Silicon binary, including the application bundle, instead of having to go through all this to compile it! It's working well for me, so far. Btw., the direct link to the latest nightly build, as given at https://mpv.io/installation/ is:

https://nightly.link/mpv-player/mpv/workflows/build/master

@alphagumibear - about uninstalling - apart from the mpv folder, the instructions in the main post involve installing Homebrew, and a number of packages within it. If you want to completely remove Homebrew and all the packages, see: Homebrew/install: 📥 Homebrew (un)installer

Otherwise, you'll probably want to remove libplacebo, the mpv formula's dependencies, and possibly dylibbundler and molten-vk, using the brew uninstall [packagename] command. Uninstalling the mpv dependencies is a bit tricky though, because brew uninstall mpv will just tell you that it's not installed. There may be a better way to do it, but I ended up just doing brew install mpv (which downloaded and installed a lot of things) and then brew uninstall mpv. That removed all the unused dependencies.

@hvirta - thanks, good to know after so many years we can finally download an Apple Silicon binary, including the application bundle, instead of having to go through all this to compile it! It's working well for me, so far. Btw., the direct link to the latest nightly build, as given at https://mpv.io/installation/ is:

https://nightly.link/mpv-player/mpv/workflows/build/master

@alphagumibear - about uninstalling - apart from the mpv folder, the instructions in the main post involve installing Homebrew, and a number of packages within it. If you want to completely remove Homebrew and all the packages, see: Homebrew/install: 📥 Homebrew (un)installer

Otherwise, you'll probably want to remove libplacebo, the mpv formula's dependencies, and possibly dylibbundler and molten-vk, using the brew uninstall [packagename] command. Uninstalling the mpv dependencies is a bit tricky though, because brew uninstall mpv will just tell you that it's not installed. There may be a better way to do it, but I ended up just doing brew install mpv (which downloaded and installed a lot of things) and then brew uninstall mpv. That removed all the unused dependencies.

thank you for your response Elhem!

I don't see the OSC anymore and I can't enable it. Do you know what I might miss?

I don't see the OSC anymore and I can't enable it. Do you know what I might miss?

it looks like they changed the dependencies with the latest v0.39.0 release. you'll need to rerun step 4 of the instructions:

brew install --build-from-source --only-dependencies mpv && brew install libplacebo

(this will install the new mujs and luajit dependencies)