How to Download and Watch MZed Courses Offline on Apple Silicon Macs

MZed Education

by Slavik BoyechkoNovember 4^th, 2022

One of the benefits of silicon-chip Macs is you can use iOS apps within MacOS, and that includes the MZed app. If you have a MacBook Air, Pro, or Mac Mini with the new chip, you’re in luck. You can now download MZed courses and watch them offline on your desktop or laptop.

Downloading and watching courses offline has been a top request from MZed Pro members. The primary barrier has been finding a way to manage access to the courses, so that active members can download and watch all MZed lessons during their year-long subscription, while inactive members would no longer have access.

On a laptop or desktop computer, enabling offline, permanent downloads works well for anyone who purchases a lesson or course outright. They get lifetime access to the material and can download and watch the videos in anyway they choose. But for MZed Pro subscribers, there hasn’t been a way to enable desktop downloads while maintaining control of the video access, until now.

The MZed iOS App to download MZed courses

In 2019 we launched the MZed iOS app, which provides both streaming as well as unlimited offline downloads for all MZed courses. The app has become a much loved mobile solution for MZed members using iOS on their iPhone or iPad.

And then a couple years ago Apple surprised everyone with a bonus feature in their new M1-chip computers: the ability to use iOS apps within MacOS. As soon as I got my hands on an M1 Mac Mini, I sideloaded the MZed app to see how well it worked. The results? It’s brilliant!

So if you have one of the new Macs, you can now download MZed courses and watch them offline inside the app. If you haven’t committed to one of the new Mac computers, that’s ok. All of Apple’s forthcoming releases will feature the new chip, so we foresee MZed Pro being available for many more Apple users going forward.

How to Sideload the MZed App on an Silicon Mac

To sideload the MZed app on your Silicon Mac, there’s a few easy steps to follow. First, open up your App Store and search for “MZed”. Then in the results, click on iPhone & iPad Apps at the top, rather than Mac Apps.

You should now see the MZed app – click “Get” to download it. It should show up in your Applications folder, and you can now add it to your dock if you’d like.

Once the app is loaded and you’re logged in, you can now go into the app settings and choose whether you want to download High Quality downloads, or leave the setting as is. You also have the option to delete all your downloads, to free up space.

Now when you’re browsing a course, you can go to any lesson and click on the download icon to save that lesson for offline viewing. You’ll see the download status indicator if the download is progressing. Now you when you go to manage your downloads, you can see all your courses where you’ve downloaded at least one lesson.

Other features when using the iOS app on Silicon Mac computers

There are a variety of reasons why you’d want to enable MZed offline viewing on your Mac. For starters, not everybody has an iPad, and an iPhone is often too small to really take in a filmmaking course. There are also times when you want to use your MacBook without an internet connection, such as distraction-free learning, watching courses during a commute or a weekend away, or if your internet is spotty.

For me personally, a few months ago I found a perfectly good MacBook Air M1 for only $300 on Craigslist – it just has a tiny crack at the bottom of the screen. I prefer using the MacBook Air to an iPad because it’s just so much better for writing while watching videos than an iPad.

With the sideloaded MZed app, you get the same benefits from watching courses offline as you would if you watched the courses on your desktop, including:

• Certificates of Completion will continue to be provided for any course that you complete. If you complete a course offline, the app will email you the certificate the next time your phone goes online.
• The app fully supports your Watch Lists.
• There’s seamless integration with watching courses on other platforms, so you can pause a lesson on the app and continue watching where you left off on another desktop or tablet browser, and vice versa.

​If you have a Silicon Mac, give it a try and let us know how it goes! We’re excited for the opportunity to enable more offline viewing of MZed courses. Hopefully this is only the beginning for merging mobile apps and desktop computers.

Learn More with MZed Pro

As an MZed Pro member, you also get access to over 300 hours of filmmaking education, plus we’re constantly adding more courses (several are currently in production).

For just $30/month (billed annually at $349), here’s everything you’ll get:

• 40+ courses, over 600 high-quality lessons spanning over 300 hours of learning.
• Highly produced courses from educators who have decades of experience and awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award.
• Unlimited access to stream all the content during the 12 months.
• Offline download and viewing with the MZed iOS app.
• Discounts to ARRI Academy online courses, exclusively on MZed.
• The majority of our courses provide an industry-recognized certificate upon completion.
• Purchasing the courses outright would cost over $7,600.
• Course topics include cinematography, directing, lighting, cameras, and lenses, producing, indie filmmaking, writing, editing, color grading, audio, and even how to launch a YouTube channel.
• 7-day money back guarantee if you decide it’s not for you.

Join MZed Pro now and start watching today!

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD