How to convert MOV to MP4 on a Mac.
From the heavyweight tools to the one-gesture version.
MOV and MP4 are close cousins — often the same video in a different wrapper — which makes the traditional conversion routes feel absurdly heavy. Here they are anyway, next to the light one.
1iMovie (built in — overkill but free)
- Create a new project and import the MOV.
- Drag it to the timeline, then File → Share → File…
- Export — the result is an MP4 (H.264).
Works, but you launched a video editor and re-encoded your footage to change a container.
2HandBrake (free app — powerful, fiddly)
- Install HandBrake, open the MOV.
- Pick a preset (Fast 1080p30 is the usual choice).
- Choose a destination and press Start.
Great control for enthusiasts; a lot of interface for 'make it play everywhere'.
3Rename with RenameTo (one gesture)
- In Finder, rename video.mov to video.mp4 and press Return.
- RenameTo remuxes instantly when codecs allow, or converts via hardware encoding when they don't.
- The original is backed up; Undo restores it beside the converted output from the menu bar.
The version that matches the size of the task. Add a size token — video.25mb.mp4 — to compress in the same pass.
Most MOV files are already H.264 inside — RenameTo detects that and just rewraps them into MP4 in about a second, no quality change at all. Only genuinely incompatible codecs get re-encoded, with Apple's hardware encoder.
Questions? Answers.
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