QuickTime

QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple. It supports playback of several common audio and video formats, including Apple's proprietary .MOV format.

The QuickTime framework includes two fundamental aspects — QuickTime Player and QuickTime developer tools, also known as "QTKit." QuickTime Player is an application used for opening and playing videos and audio files. QTKit is an API that developers can use to process multimedia formats within a program. Examples include creating, saving, and converting media files. The API also provides developers with access to prebuilt media controls.

History

Apple released the first version of QuickTime in 1991. For over two decades, it was the standard media technology used in macOS, including OS X. During this time, Apple released several versions of QuickTime Player, through version 7.x. In 1998, Apple released a "Pro" version as a paid upgrade. QuickTime Player Pro provided more editing features and additional file format support than the free version.

In 2009, Apple released Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which included a new version of QuickTime called QuickTime X. This modernized version of QuickTime Player was bundled with macOS through version 10.14 Mojave, released in 2018. Apple did not release QuickTime X for Windows, but did offer several versions of QuickTime Player for Windows, through version 7.7.9. Apple discontinued support for the Windows version of QuickTime Player in early 2016.

File extensions: .MOV, .QT, .MP4