How to download amazon prime movies on macbook

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Until now, downloading Prime Video shows and films was only possible on mobile.

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Until now, downloading Prime Video shows and films was only possible on mobile.
Steps to Download Amazon Videos on Mac

Enlarge / The Amazon Prime Video app for macOS.

Samuel Axon

Amazon has released a Prime Video app that runs natively on the Mac. The app offers many of the same features as the mobile app but is available in the Mac App Store.

The app is free to download but requires an Amazon account to access content. That content includes both shows and movies that stream free with Amazon Prime Video, as well as purchases and rentals from Amazon's entire catalog. In fact, there's a prominently placed toggle button labeled "Free to me" in the top-right corner of the app. Checking this means that you'll just see content that is free with Prime.

The app is broken up into home, store, find, downloads, and my stuff tabs.

Apart from the fact that the Mac platform has a history and culture of native apps and that said apps can be a little nicer to use in some minor ways, the main benefit of using this native app is that it allows for downloading episodes to the local machine just like the mobile app does—ideal for preparing for long flights and other periods when you might be away from fast, reliable internet.

It is unusual for a streaming-video native app to be released on the Mac, given that most people who watch streaming networks like Amazon Prime Video do so via the web, which is treated as the lead platform by most streaming companies. But the downloading capability seems to be the main reason for this app's existence.

Before now, downloading Amazon Prime Video content to a Mac was not possible—it was only possible on the iPhone or iPad. And the Amazon Prime Video mobile app was not among the various iPhone and iPad apps that were downloadable and usable on M1 Macs.

The Amazon Prime Video app for Mac requires macOS Big Sur or later.

Listing image by Getty Images | Leon Neal

Better late than never, as they say: Amazon today launched a Prime Video app for macOS that’s available as a free download in the Mac App Store. Prime Video for Mac includes support for offline downloads, and you can choose your preferred video quality both for regular streaming and downloads. (At the “best” setting, Amazon estimates around 5.8GB of data usage per hour when streaming. The figure is slightly lower for downloads, with Amazon quoting 2.9GB per hour of downloaded video.)

When you first open Prime Video for Mac, the app asks whether you want to receive notifications for content recommendations and other alerts. But from there, it’s much the same experience as on other platforms. Oddly, the Prime Video app itself can’t be made full-screen — but that changes as soon as you start playing a movie or TV show. Amazon is supporting native macOS features like picture-in-picture and AirPlay, and it’s also baked in its own extras like X-Ray with cast and behind-the-scenes info.

Aside from the regular free-with-Prime-subscription selection, there’s also a dedicated store tab where you can rent or purchase content. Amazon will use your account’s stored payment info when making charges. Other settings in the app include auto play and subtitle preferences, parental controls, and you can also view other devices that have been registered to your Prime account. Any deeper account management than that will require going to Amazon’s site in a browser.

From a functionality standpoint, most of what you’d want out of a Prime Video app is now on the Mac. That new 16-inch MacBook Pro makes for quite a portable movie-watching experience. Amazon’s Prime Video app for Mac is compatible with macOS Big Sur and later.

If you ask Amazon Help center, how to download Amazon Prime videos to watch offline, they will tell you that “To download Prime Video titles for offline viewing, you need a Fire tablet, or the Prime Video app for iOS, Android or Windows 10.” That is to say, if you have the mobile phones, like iPhone, or Samsung, or Huawei, or you have the Tablets like iPad, iPad Mini, Air, or Android Tablets, or you are Windows 10 users, you can install Amazon Prime App on your devices and then download them for offline playback with the App.

If you are a Mac user, and want to download Amazon Prime Videos so as to play and watch them offline on your Mac Mini, or iMac and so on, how to do?

Please don’t worry, the next guide will tell you how to download videos from Amazon to Mac step by step.

Think that we can’t use Amazon Prime App to download videos on Mac, we can turn to the third party Amazon Prime Video Downloader for help, Kigo Amazon Prime Video Downloader is one them, which is mainly produced to download movies, TV series and documentaries from Amazon and save to MP4 format with audio track and subtitles kept. And it supports up to 1080p quality video downloading.

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Steps to Download Amazon Videos on Mac

Step 1: Click to download the latest version of Amazon Prime Video Downloader, install and run it.

Once you install and run software, if you have purchased the full version, just register to active it.

Step 2: Download Settings

You can set the downloading by clicking the setting icon before or after you add these videos.

Step 3: Add Amazon Videos to Download

There are three methods to add Amazon videos to download.

Method 1. Copy or drag the video url to the program.

Method 2. Search the videos with title or keywords to Add.

After pasting the URL or entering the title of a video, press the "Enter" key and a prompt will be shown asking you to login with your Amazon Prime account.

Step 4. Start downloading.

Now you can click the "Download" button to start download Amazon movies or TV shows.

When the downloading is completed, you can click on Library to find the downloaded Amazon videos.

Conclusion

Whether you are a Mac user or Windows user, there is no need to worry about downloading videos from Amazon Prime so as to watch them while you are on a trip or on the go as you like.

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