HandBrake Documentation

Building HandBrake for Mac

Building HandBrake for Mac requires an Apple computer with a 64-bit Intel processor running OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra or later¹, and the following dependencies.

• Xcode 10 or later
  • free Apple Developer registration required, or install from the Mac App Store
• Command Line Tools for Xcode
  • free Apple Developer registration required, or install using xcode-select --install

Additional dependencies (may be built via included script):

• autoconf
• automake
• cmake (3.8.2 or later recommended)
• libtool
• nasm 2.13 or later
• pkg-config
• yasm 1.2.0 or later (1.3.0 or later recommended)

Install Xcode² and open it once. Approve any prompts to install additional tools. You may quit Xcode after it has finished loading.

Install Command Line Tools for Xcode³.

xcode-select --install

Clone the HandBrake repository.

git clone https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake.git && cd HandBrake

List available tags in the HandBrake 1.2.x release series, and check out the most recent.

git tag --list | grep ^1\.2\.
git checkout refs/tags/$(git tag -l | grep -E '^1\.2\.[0-9]+$' | tail -n 1)

You may build and install the additional dependencies using the included script. Feel free to choose a different output path, if desired.

scripts/mac-toolchain-build /usr/local

This process will take a few minutes. If necessary, the script will provide you with instructions for adding the resulting binaries location to your environment’s PATH⁴. Do this now.

Build HandBrake. To build the command line interface only, disable the graphical interface by appending --disable-xcode.

./configure --launch-jobs=$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu) --launch

When complete, you will find HandBrakeCLI in the build/xroot directory. If the graphical interface is enabled, you will also find HandBrake.app in this directory.

Install HandBrake (optional).

sudo make --directory=build install

To start over, simply remove the build directory.

rm -rf build