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I am using Mac OS X 10.9.1 (Mavericks) on a late 2012 27" iMac, running Safari 7.0.1 and I always install all new software updates.

But now I have a problem with midi-files that are embedded in websites (like wikipedia, take http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonality as an example). When I click on one of those midi-files I expect to hear music. But instead I get an error message telling me that there is no plugin for content of the type "audio/midi".

Where can I download the missing plugin?

I am not really shure, but I believe that playing midi files from a website was no problem in previous versions of OS X. Is this a bug in Mavericks?

EDIT 1 (Nov 2014):

This question is almost one year old and has more then 10,000 views, but is still left without an useful answer. And midi is still not supported by Safari 8 and Yosemite.

I do NOT want to download outdated software to use a widely used feature that was supported for many years and is neither a security risk nor any other harm to any computer, just because Apples developers are too reluctant and lame to continue supporting such a simple file format. And I do NOT want to download files and later open them with some other software.

What I want is this:

A plugin for Safari that I can install additionally to any other plugins (meaning: leave the newest Quicktime-plugin as it is and additionally install a new midi-plugin that is independent from Quicktime) to be able to hear music when I click onto a link to a midi-file in a html-document like this.

EDIT 2 (Dec 2014, when starting the bounty):

12,000+ views and still no useful answer.
To win the bounty please post a link to a site where you can download a plugin for Safari that is independent from Quicktime, that can be installed without replacing Quicktime to make it possible to play music that is encoded in Midi-files, like Quicktime did in previous times, just by clicking on a link to a midi-file.

EDIT 3 (May 2015):

20,000+ views and still no useful answer.

I can't believe, that there is really no plugin for Safari (or other browsers running on an iMac; OS X) that is able to play midi-music.

As with any other audio file that is linked in a website, I just want to click on it and do no other extras to hear the music that is stored in this file.

Hey, this worked already 20 years ago, in 1995, in the first days of Internet. This can't be so hard in 2015!

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  • not really an answer, more of a hope for the future - see heartbeatjs.org/docs/about-heartbeat
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 21, 2014 at 16:38
  • Have you heard of jazz-soft.net/download/Jazz-Plugin? It is a plugin for all browsers.
    – ryebread
    May 19, 2015 at 14:25
  • @ryebread: No, I haven't heard of it before. But now I downloaded it and instlled it, and: Nothing did change. Safari still says: »missing plugin«. Is there a special trick to make safari realize that there is a new plugin? I already restarted my iMac, but it didn't help.
    – Hubert Schölnast
    May 19, 2015 at 15:31
  • @ryebread: I found the problem: Jazz-plugin registers for the Mime-type »audio/x-jazz«. But midi files always come with the Mime-type »audio/midi«.
    – Hubert Schölnast
    May 19, 2015 at 16:06

4 Answers 4

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Support for playing .mid files in Safari was removed in 10.8. The QuickTime plugin from 10.7 or 10.6 still works in 10.9 though. See https://discussions.apple.com/message/23948316#23948316.

  1. Copy /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/QuickTime Plugin.plugin from a 10.7 or 10.6 installation to ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ on your 10.9 or 10.8 installation.

  2. Run these commands:

    f=~/Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/QuickTime\ Plugin.plugin/Contents/Info.plist
defaults write "$f" CFBundleName 'QuickTime Plugin.plugin2'
defaults write "$f" CFBundleIdentifier 'com.apple.QuickTime Plugin.plugin2'
defaults write "$f" WebPluginMIMETypesFilename com.apple.quicktime.plugin2.preferences.plist

  3. Save this file as ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.quicktime.plugin2.preferences.plist:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>WebPluginLocalizationName</key>
    <string>en_US</string>
    <key>WebPluginMIMETypeFilteringVersion</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>WebPluginMIMETypes</key>
    <dict>
     <key>audio/mid</key>
     <dict>
         <key>WebPluginExtensions</key>
         <array>
          <string>mid</string>
          <string>midi</string>
          <string>smf</string>
          <string>kar</string>
         </array>
         <key>WebPluginTypeDescription</key>
         <string>MIDI</string>
         <key>WebPluginTypeEnabled</key>
         <true/>
     </dict>
     <key>audio/midi</key>
     <dict>
         <key>WebPluginExtensions</key>
         <array>
          <string>mid</string>
          <string>midi</string>
          <string>smf</string>
          <string>kar</string>
         </array>
         <key>WebPluginTypeDescription</key>
         <string>MIDI</string>
         <key>WebPluginTypeEnabled</key>
         <true/>
     </dict>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

  4. Quit and reopen Safari.

After that you should be able to play .mid files in Safari, but you have to allow websites to use the plugin manually:

You can also play .mid files with VLC or QuickTime Player 7.

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  • 2
    Actually, you can't play .mid files with VLC.
    – user107571
    Jan 6, 2015 at 17:07
  • Thanks, this worked like a dream for me. Maybe some people will find this process a little scary.
    – Geoff Pointer
    Jul 16, 2015 at 7:10
  • @GeoffPointer: Install outdated software? Yes this is scary. And it is dangerous, because outdated software is a security risk. It might contain vulnerabilities that might be exploited by developers of malware, but which might be removed by newer version. If you keep the old version, you stay vulnerable forever.
    – Hubert Schölnast
    Aug 7, 2015 at 13:17
  • @HubertSchölnast I believe this setup only associated the outdated player with MIDI files; all other media files remain associated with your current installation of QuickTime... so unless you're browsing exceptionally shady MIDI sites it's probably not a big deal ;)
    – Doktor J
    May 31, 2017 at 14:23
  • @DoktorJ: MIDI is not shady. You can do many things with midi, that can't be done with media files. For me it is a big deal, and MIDI is technically easy to implement. I can't understand, why it is no longer supported.
    – Hubert Schölnast
    May 31, 2017 at 16:47
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It gets worse; current (Mojave) Safari 12 AFAIK will not support any plugin other than Adobe Flash, and that only because too many sites still use it. Apparently, in their view, ALL plugins (or at any rate all NPAPI plugins) are dangerous, and the last one (Flash) is only tolerated because of the level of discontent that would result if it were blocked too. Most other modern browsers are also headed in that direction, if they're not there already. Older Firefox ESR versions, and perhaps a few other browsers, may still be able to use arbitrary NPAPI plugins; but those browsers may be a risk (not well maintained, or not maintained at all).

You can slightly improve on the use of MIDI Player X, by enabling auto-open of files with the "mid" extension by Safari (see How to automatically open files downloaded from Safari? but replace torrent in their example with mid) and by setting auto-play (click the words until they turn blue) in MIDI Player X. Restart Safari after creating the file described in the link.

This will NOT do any good for HTML coding embed tags, nor will it avoid leaving a copy of the file in your Downloads directory; but it will at least allow clicking on an href link to a file with the "mid" extension to play the file without further action being required.

edit: a solution that provides playback similar to a MIDI plugin is possible on modern browsers, but requires web page changes. See http://www.midijs.net and try some of the examples. Still no help with existing web pages not under your control that use embed tags.

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-1

MIDIPlayer X from the Mac App store - £0.79 in UK. Simply drop the MIDI file on to the app.

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  • 1
    Is this a plugin for Safari? Because I already have other programs that can play midifiles. What I need is a plugin for Safari. For when there is a midifile embedded in a website, i just want to click on it and want to hear the music without the need of downloading that file and open it in another program. Look at my question at the end of both Edit-Sections there are links to midifiles. I want to clock on them and immediately hear music, without any other action.
    – Hubert Schölnast
    May 19, 2015 at 14:21
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I have had the same problem trying to download midi music files. I get around the problem by downloading the link and opening the file using Finale (MakeMusic software). It is a bit of a nuisance because I cannot preview the file before downloading and opening, but at least I am successful. I hope this problem is solved by Safari in the future. Amid all the crap MIDI's online, there are some truly excellent ones.

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  • 1
    Downloading and opening in another program is not a solution, as I clearly stated in my question. Safari will NOT solve this problem in the future. It worked fine in the past (2 years ago and before), but since Quicktime, who was responsible for the midi-plugin, quit supporting midi, it fails to work.
    – Hubert Schölnast
    May 19, 2015 at 21:00

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