Amazon Prime Video For Mac

Amazon's Prime Video service isn't the world's most popular by a long shot, but it does offer a decent content database, an affordable subscription, and now a native macOS app.

As it stands, Amazon Prime Video is the first Mac desktop app offered by a major streaming service, and it makes us wonder why that's still the case. While it's not perfect, as it's a basic Catalyst port of the iPadOS app, the simple fact that it's available is worth appreciating.

From the start, it's clear that the main browsing window was taken directly from the iPadOS app. It features the same UI, with a main window that can't be resized past 1024px in width. There's also no vertical scroll bar, so it was clearly designed for touchscreens.

As far as the rest of the app is concerned, everything seems to work quite well. The video window can be resized freely, and you have the same quality and playback controls as on all other platforms.

However, there is an issue with the pop-out player. When you select PiP mode, the mini-player doesn't respond to keyboard commands while the main window is minimized. You can click the play/pause button, but the Space bar doesn't work, and no seek controls are available.

With this desktop app, you gain the ability to download content for offline viewing, which can be very useful if you want to watch something when an internet connection isn't available, or when you're on a limited data plan.

You also get to avoid using a browser. Not only does that free up a tab, but you won't have to worry about not getting the video quality you paid for, since Amazon and other streaming services offer lower quality content in certain browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, for DRM reasons.

Unfortunately, browsing is going to be difficult until Amazon resolves the main window resizing issue, so Safari is still a good option.

You might say that Amazon has done the bare minimum here, but that's still more than what any other streaming service offers. Hopefully, they will put more work into this app, and maybe other services will follow suit with native clients of their own.