Official support for AV1 is now available on youtube.com —> Settings —> Playback and performance --> AV1 Settings. ‘Always prefer AV1’ is only recommended for chips with AV1 Hardware accelerated decode including:
Apple M3 and A17 Pro (iPhone 15 Pro)Samsung Galaxy S24 (Exynos 2400)Pixel 8 (Tensor G3)Intel Core Ulta, Core 14th GenAMD Ryzen 7
With the exception of AVC/HEVC 5K resolution when the iMac 5K was released, YouTube only supported up to 4K HDR in Safari under macOS, limiting 8K HDR to AV1 within Chrome. Now, up to 8K60 HDR AV1 is hardware accelerated with Apple M3 and takes virtually no toll on battery life or CPU usage.
