Files with m3u8 extension are playlists saved in special  M3U UTF-8 (Unicode) text playlist format. Playlists do not contain any multimedia content, just the list of songs or other multimedia files. Playable in almost every media player.

Detailed description

Software that open m3u8 file

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M3U8 file extension - UTF-8 M3U playlist

What is m3u8 file? How to open m3u8 files?

File type specification:

Settings, options, themes or skins file type icon Settings, options, themes or skins file type

m3u8 file icon: m3u8 filetype icon

File extension m3u8 is commonly used for m3u playlists in UTF-8 (Unicode) format, which are used by various media players.

M3U (Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3 Uniform Resource Locator, MP3 URL) is a computer file format that stores multimedia playlists.

You can find more information about MP3 playlists in the m3u file extension entry.

MIME types:
audio/x-mpegurl

Updated: March 16, 2025

The default software associated to open m3u8 file:

VLC media player icon

VideoLAN Project Team logoVLC media player  Microsoft Windows software

Company or developer:
VideoLAN Project Team

Very popular multimedia player developed for Windows, Apple Mac, Linux, Unix, and various other operating systems and platforms.

VLC can playback many of the video formats (AVI, MKV, OGV, WMV, ASF, MOV...) and audio formats (MP3, AAC, M4A, OGG, FLAC...) as well as support of subtitles for video. It can also be used as a streaming server and multimedia transcoder.

Help how to open:

You can open the *.m3u8 files in most media players.

How to convert:

Generic m3u8 playlists may be converted to a media player specific format. This is done with loading the *.m3u8 file and saving it to the new format in your media player.

Find conversions from m3u8 file:

m3u8 to aac

m3u8 to m3u

m3u8 to pls

m3u8 to text

m3u8 to txt

m3u8 to xml

Find converter to m3u8 file type:

asx to m3u8

m3u to m3u8

pls to m3u8

text to m3u8

txt to m3u8

xml to m3u8

xspf to m3u8

File identification strings:

HEX code: EF BB BF 23 45 58 54 4D 33 55 0D 0A
ASCII code: ...#EXTM3U

Related links:

M3U description at Wikipedia

List of software applications associated to the .m3u8 file extension

Recommended software programs are sorted by OS platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android etc.)
and possible program actions that can be done with the file: like open m3u8 file, edit m3u8 file, convert m3u8 file, view m3u8 file, play m3u8 file etc. (if exist software for corresponding action in File-Extensions.org's database).

Hint:
Click on the tab below to simply browse between the application actions, to quickly get a list of recommended software, which is able to perform the specified software action, such as opening, editing or converting m3u8 files.

Software that open m3u8 file - UTF-8 M3U playlist

Programs supporting the exension m3u8 on the main platforms Windows, Mac, Linux or mobile. Click on the link to get more information about listed programs for open m3u8 file action.

Microsoft Windows:

Main software associated with m3u8 file by default:
VLC media player small icon VLC media player
Other suggested software:
Apple iTunes for Windows small icon Apple iTunes for Windows
KMPlayer small icon KMPlayer
Winamp small icon Winamp

Apple macOS / Mac OS X:

Linux/Unix:

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