Play .mp4 / .m4a / .aac / .mov audio directly in VS Code.
Why this exists
VS Code runs on Chromium, and the Chromium build it ships does not include an AAC
decoder (patent licensing). Opening an audio-only .mp4 therefore gives you either
silence or "Unable to play this video." — even though QuickTime, which uses macOS's
licensed decoder, plays the same file fine.
This extension decodes the file outside the webview using your locally installed
ffmpeg, caches the result, and hands the editor a format it can actually demux.
Or point aacAudioPreview.ffmpegPath at the binary.
Settings
Setting
Default
Notes
aacAudioPreview.ffmpegPath
ffmpeg
Path to the binary. ffprobe is resolved alongside it.
aacAudioPreview.format
wav
wav (PCM) is the only container reliably demuxed by VS Code's Chromium. ogg (Opus) is ~6× smaller but rejected by many builds.
aacAudioPreview.sampleRate
24000
WAV only. 16000 is fine for speech and cuts size by a third.
aacAudioPreview.bitrate
64k
Ogg only.
Notes
Your source files are never modified. Transcodes are written to the extension's
global storage, keyed by source path + settings, so re-opening a file is instant.
Run Audio Preview: Clear Transcode Cache from the command palette to reclaim space.
A 30-minute recording decodes in ~1.5s and occupies ~83 MB of cache as 24 kHz mono WAV.
License
MIT
Known limitations
This extension registers as the default editor for .mp4 and .mov, so a file with
a real video track will open here as audio-only. Use Reopen Editor With… → Video
Preview for those.
Playback is served from a decoded copy, so the cache trades disk space for compatibility.
