How to Shuffle Videos From a Folder on a Mac: Random Playback, Continuous Play, and a Hands-Free Video Slideshow

To shuffle videos from a folder on a Mac, open the folder in a player that has a random mode, such as VLC or IINA (both free downloads), or point a Plush Media Player tile at the folder. Choosing a folder for a Plush tile, in order or shuffled, is part of Plush Pro. QuickTime Player, Apple's built-in player, has no playlist and no shuffle, and Quick Look only steps through a selection in a fixed order.

The short answer

A folder of video clips is one of the most common things on a Mac and one of the least playable. You do not want to pick the next one. You want the Mac to choose, forever, without the same clip twice in a row.

macOS gives you pieces of this, not the whole thing:

• Built in and free: QuickTime Player opens files one at a time. Quick Look and Photos make slideshows. The Music app has a documented shuffle, but for songs. None of them takes a folder of videos and plays them in random order on a loop.
• Free downloads: VLC and IINA both have playlists with a shuffle mode. They are not Mac App Store apps, and they play one playlist in one window.
• A tile that does it: Plush Media Player, free on the Mac App Store (macOS 14 or later). With Plush Pro, a one-time $2.99 upgrade, you choose a folder for a tile and it plays through the videos, photos and songs in it, in order or shuffled, moves on when each video ends, and keeps going. Pro also runs up to eight tiles at once, each with its own folder. The free version plays single files, websites and Apple Music in up to three tiles.

We built Plush for this gap, so we are biased. The free options come first, then the Plush Pro routine.

Who wants random playback from a folder

Hosts running a party or lobby screen that needs no hand on the trackpad. Families with ten years of phone clips and a few digitized tapes. Editors reviewing B-roll who want to see all of it before any of it twice. Dancers and athletes cycling drills without a gap. Shops and waiting rooms with a Mac mini and a display. They all want the same thing: press play once and let the Mac choose.

Free ways to shuffle videos on a Mac, and where they stop

QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player is the default answer and the wrong tool. Apple's QuickTime Player User Guide covers opening and playing a file, choosing a screen size, subtitles, recording, and a set of editing tasks. The table of contents has no playlist, queue or shuffle topic. You open a file, it plays, it stops. Opening a hundred files gives you a hundred windows, not a queue.

The Music app

The Music app does have shuffle, and Apple documents it in Shuffle or repeat songs. It is a feature for songs in your library and playlists. We could not find Apple documentation describing it as a way to shuffle a folder of home videos, and importing a folder into a library is more setup than the job deserves.

Photos slideshow

Photos is the strongest built-in option for stills. Apple's guide says you can select photos and videos in your library and choose File > Play Slideshow, or Control-click an album and choose Start Slideshow. Under Customize you can change the transition and speed, pick music, and turn on Loop (Apple Support: Create slideshows in Photos). The catch is the word "library": files have to be imported first.

Quick Look

Select files in Finder, press Space, and Quick Look opens them. With several items selected, Apple's guide says you can browse with the arrow keys and, in full screen, view the items as a slideshow (Apple Support: Quick Look). In our experience images hold for about 5 seconds, and there is no setting for dwell, transition or order. There is no shuffle.

VLC and IINA

These are the real free answers. Both are free downloads from their own sites rather than the Mac App Store. VLC is free and open source and has a playlist with random and repeat modes. IINA is free and open source, built on mpv, and has playlist shuffle too: its 1.5.0 release notes mention that you can now unshuffle the playlist if it has not changed since the last shuffle.

If you only need one folder in one window, either is a good choice. The limits show up when you want more: one playlist per window, no slideshow timing or transitions for photos, and a second folder means a second window you arrange yourself, again next time.

Shortcuts and Automator

You can build a Shortcuts or Automator workflow that picks a file from a folder and opens it. That is a launcher, not a player: nothing advances when the video ends unless you build the waiting and looping yourself.

How to shuffle a folder of videos with Plush

Plush opens with empty tiles, each able to hold a folder, a single file, a web page or an Apple Music playlist.

1. Choose a folder (Plush Pro). On an empty tile choose Local Files (the Video button in the screenshot above), then Folder. The Mac's folder panel opens with the message "Choose a folder of videos, music, or photos to play". Pick your folder. Plush scans it and its subfolders, up to 5,000 files, skipping hidden files and package contents such as photo libraries. Files are read in place, not copied or imported.
2. Let it play. With Plush Pro, the folder plays in name order and wraps back to the start, or starts with a random file in Shuffle order: every file plays once before any file repeats, and the same file never plays twice in a row when the folder has at least two files.
3. Check that continuous play is on. Hover the tile to bring up its pill of controls. The infinity button is auto-advance and it is on by default: when a video ends, the tile picks the next one. Click it and it turns into an arrow, which means the tile stops after the current video.
4. Roll the dice when you want something new (Plush Pro). The dice button, labeled "Next random video" in its tooltip, skips to another random file. The button beside it flips between Shuffling and Playing in order, which walks the folder in name order and wraps back to the start.
5. Add more tiles. Use the tile stepper in the sidebar (⌘\) to go up to eight with Plush Pro, and give each its own folder.
6. Save the session (Plush Pro). In the sidebar, Sessions > Save Current Session stores the tiles, including each folder, its order, auto-advance and slideshow settings. Load it next time and your wall is back.

With Plush Pro, the shuffle button lives in the tile's pill, the row of controls that appears when you hover a tile. A tile showing a single file has one too, labeled "Shuffle a folder": press it, pick a folder, and the tile switches to shuffling it.

Which files play

A Plush folder tile, in order or shuffled, picks from video, audio and image files:

• Video: mp4, mov, m4v and avi. MKV and WebM are left out of folder playback on purpose, because macOS may not be able to open them.
• Audio: mp3, m4a, aac, wav, aiff, flac and caf. A folder of only songs becomes a jukebox, with artwork and an "Up next" line.
• Images: jpg, png, heic, heif, gif, tiff, webp and bmp. A folder with photos in it gets the slideshow controls.

A mixed folder plays all of it in turn.

Slideshow dwell, transitions and Ken Burns drift

Videos play to the end. Photos have no end, so Plush needs to know how long to hold them, and a folder with images adds three behaviors to the tile:

• Dwell. The timer button cycles the hold time through 3, 7, 15, 30 and 60 seconds. The default is 7.
• Transition. The effect button switches between Crossfade, a 1-second dissolve, and Slide, a 0.6-second push that moves in the direction you are travelling. With Reduce Motion on in macOS, Slide becomes a dissolve.
• Ken Burns drift. Each photo moves slowly during its dwell, a gentle zoom of up to 12% with a small pan in a random direction. It is on by default, runs for the length of the dwell, and is switched off by macOS Reduce Motion. Animated GIFs play their own frames and do not drift.

These settings affect photos only. A video or song in the same folder is never cut short by the dwell timer. A "Previous" control steps back through the last 20 items, which helps when a photo slid away before you finished looking. To run these photos beside an Apple Music tile, see how to play a slideshow with music on a Mac.

Shuffle several folders at once: an ambient wall

This is where a tile app does something a single-window player cannot. Say you shot video on four trips. With Plush Pro, load a different trip folder into each of four tiles. Each shuffles independently, so at any moment you are looking at four unrelated moments from four places, changing on their own schedules as clips end.

A few ways to set it up:

• The travel wall. Four folders, a 2x2 grid, Plush in full screen with ⌃⌘F. Set the sound to Focus so only the tile under your pointer plays audio, or mute everything with M.
• The party screen. One tile of video clips, one of photos on a 15-second dwell, and an Apple Music playlist in a third. Our ambient video wall guide covers mixing the audio so the music stays on top.
• The workout loop. One large tile in Hero layout (Pro) with a folder of routines in shuffle (Pro), a small tile with a playlist.
• The store display. Product clips in one tile, a Crossfade photo slideshow in another, saved as a session (Pro) so a restart brings it back.

Apple Music rides in another tile. Add an Apple Music tile and pick a playlist. Plush mixes the web, local files and Apple Music in one window, which no player in the table above does.

Shuffle This Site: random videos from a site you are on

Folders are the local half. The same idea works for web tiles. Open a supported site in a tile, and Plush Pro can pick a random video from the links on the page you are on, using Shuffle This Site in the tile's right-click menu or the dice button in the pill.

Here is how it behaves, from the app itself:

• It recognizes 20 sites by name. Plush has dedicated link recognizers for YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Kick, ESPN, Rumble, Odysee, Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, Nebula, Crunchyroll, Apple TV and several subscription services, 20 in all. For other sites you have allowed, a generic scorer looks for video-shaped links on the page.
• It needs an allowed site. Web tiles open the built-in streaming sites plus any domain you add in settings. For services that need an account, sign in on the service's own site in the tile.
• It does not repeat itself quickly. Plush draws from a bag so every video it has found comes up once before any repeats, and it avoids the last 10 draws when a bag refills. The pool grows as you browse, up to 400 links per site, and history is remembered between launches.
• It fails closed. With no video links on the page, the button is disabled.
• It can keep going. With Plush Pro, the infinity button on a web tile makes it jump to another random video when the current one ends.

Pair a shuffled folder of your own clips with a shuffled site (both Plush Pro) in the next tile and you have a wall that never settles.

What Plush does not do

• Folder playback skips MKV and WebM. Convert them or open them as single files.
• Folders come in through the Folder button, not by dragging a folder onto a tile. Dragging works for single files.
• There is no playlist editor. You get the whole folder; to exclude something, move it out.
• Ken Burns has no on/off button in the pill. It follows its default, and macOS Reduce Motion turns it off.

If one folder in one window is all you need, VLC or IINA does it for free and does it well. If you want several folders, photos with real slideshow controls, Apple Music and web pages together, or a layout you can save and restore, that is what a tile app is for. The multi-video player page has the full tile and layout details, and our side-by-side comparison guide covers the case where you want two clips synced instead of shuffled.

Frequently asked questions

Can QuickTime shuffle videos?

No. QuickTime Player opens one file at a time per window, and Apple's QuickTime Player User Guide lists no playlist, queue or shuffle feature. Use VLC or IINA, or a Plush tile pointed at the folder (folder playback, shuffle included, needs Plush Pro).

How do I play all videos in a folder on a Mac?

In Plush Pro, choose Local Files > Folder on a tile and pick the folder. It plays, in order, every supported video in the folder and its subfolders, and moves to the next when one ends. VLC and IINA load an opened folder as a playlist, and are the free route.

How do I loop a folder of videos on a Mac?

With auto-advance on, which is the default, a Plush folder tile never runs out. In order mode it wraps back to the first file; shuffle mode refills its random bag once every file has played. Turn auto-advance off with the infinity button if you want it to stop after the current video.

How do I play a random video from a folder on a Mac?

With Plush Pro, choose the folder in a Plush tile, switch it to Shuffling, and it starts on a random file. Press the dice button in the tile's pill for another random pick. Every file plays once before any repeats. Without Plush Pro, a Plush tile cannot play a folder at all; VLC and IINA are the free route to random order.

Can I make a video slideshow from a folder on a Mac?

Yes, with Plush Pro. A Plush folder tile plays videos in full and holds photos for 3, 7, 15, 30 or 60 seconds with a Crossfade or Slide transition and a slow Ken Burns drift. Photos can do something similar from library albums, but files must be imported first.

Can I shuffle more than one folder at the same time?

In Plush Pro, yes. Each tile holds its own folder and shuffles on its own, and you can have up to eight tiles in a window, so four folders of travel clips make a four-tile ambient wall. Add an Apple Music playlist in another tile for sound, and save the setup as a session (Plush Pro).

Does Plush shuffle videos from websites too?

Yes, on supported sites, with Plush Pro. Shuffle This Site picks a random video from the links on the page a web tile is showing, avoids recent repeats, and can jump to another when the current one ends. It works on the built-in streaming sites and on domains you add.

Plush Media Player is free on the Mac App Store, and Plush Pro is a one-time $2.99 with no subscription and no account. With Plush Pro, point a tile at a folder, press play, and let the Mac pick.