How to Loop a Video on Mac

The fastest way to loop a video on Mac is to open it in QuickTime Player and choose View > Loop, or press Option-Command-L. That covers playback on your own machine. If the loop has to survive being sent somewhere, it's a different job, here's both.

Loop a video on Mac in QuickTime Player

Open the video or audio file and choose View > Loop so a checkmark appears beside it. The file now plays to the end and starts over from the beginning, continuously. The keyboard shortcut is Option-Command-L. To stop, choose View > Loop again and the checkmark disappears.

This is the right answer for a surprisingly large share of the people searching for it: a demo running on a screen at an event, a reference clip on a second monitor, a piece of footage you need to watch twenty times to find one frame. One menu command and you're done.

What it doesn't do is change the file. Looping here is a setting inside QuickTime Player on your Mac. Send the video to someone and it plays once for them, exactly as it always did.

When the repeat has to live in the file itself

When the loop has to be in the video itself, no application setting produces it. What produces it is a match between the last frame and the first.

That match is mostly decided while filming. The framing has to be identical, the subject has to end where they started, and the light has to be the same. An overcast sky brightening across a thirty-second shot will break a loop no editing can save. Shooting deliberately for a loop means holding the camera still and returning the action to its starting position, which feels awkward and is the entire technique.

The rest is precision. Once you have footage that can loop, the in and out points have to land on the exact frames where the motion matches. A discrepancy of a few frames is enough for a viewer to see the seam, and once they've seen it they see it every time round, which on a looping clip is a lot of times. This is why looping is really a trimming problem, and why a rough cut never quite works.

No export limit, no time limit, no watermark

Montaj has no loop button. The repeat is something you build by getting the cut right, or something you leave to the platform you're posting on, and that's not going to change by opening a different app.

What it does offer is the conditions the cut needs: a real timeline for placing the in and out points, 100 steps of undo while you hunt for the exact match, and an export with no duration limit, so a clip meant to be watched on repeat can also be delivered as several repetitions in one file if that suits the platform better. It's free today with no watermark, which matters more here than elsewhere: a logo that reappears on every cycle is the one element a loop guarantees your audience will stare at. For playing something back on your own screen, loop a video on Mac with QuickTime Player and stop there.