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
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