[bruhsfx2]

Not to say for sure Apple Silicon chips support HW AV1 decode, but I would speculate that recent generations of their SoCs may have hardware support behind a software limitation through the lack of APIs.

Under /System/Library/Video/Plug-Ins/AppleVideoDecoder.bundle there's a Info.plist, inside there are references to AV1, below that is VTIsHardwareAccelerated = true.

AVD refers to Apple Silicon HW decoder. Side note, GVA means Intel, VCP means AMD.

I guess it will be like the situation of VP9. It was available at first via a special entitlement to YouTube iOS app [1] (com.apple.developer.coremedia.allow-alternate-video-decoder-selection) and later opened to all apps.

References: 1. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decodi...