Open M3U File

The M3U extension file is a file format that stores media playlists.

M3U files, at first, were supported only by Winamp, however, currently the format is supported by multiple players, making it universal.

Such players include: AIMP, foobar2000, Mediamonkey, iTunes, JuK, VLC, Windows Media Player, and XMMS, among others.

Importantly, M3U files only target audio files, and sometimes video, so that a media player can queue them for playback.

These M3U files are text-based and can contain both URLs and absolute or relative paths to multimedia files or folders.

UTF-8 encoded M3U files are saved in the M3U8 file format.

You should consider that the M3U file, itself, is not a multimedia file.

Although the files targeted by the M3U may open fine in a different media player than the ones listed above, the program may not be able to interpret the encoding of the M3U file.

Software to open an M3U file

To open and work with an M3U file, you need one of the following software packages:

• AIMP
• Foobar2000
• Mediamonkey
• iTunes
• JuK
• VLC
• Windows Media Player
• XMMS