HandBrake Documentation

Building HandBrake for Mac

Building HandBrake for Mac requires an Apple computer with a 64-bit Intel processor running macOS 10.14.3 Mojave or later, and the following dependencies.

• Xcode 10.3 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
• Python 3.7.0 or later

Python 3 as included with macOS 11.0 Big Sur is sufficient. For macOS prior to Big Sur, after installing an updated Python 3 from an official source, please ensure the installation has properly created /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/<version>.

Additional dependencies (may be built via included script):

• autoconf 2.69 or later
• automake 1.13 or later
• cmake 3.1.0 or later
• libtool 2.4.6 or later
• meson 0.47.0 or later
• nasm 2.13 or later
• ninja 1.8.0 or later
• pkg-config 0.27.0 or later

Install Xcode 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 Xcode using the package installer provided by Apple¹, or using xcode-select.

xcode-select --install

For macOS prior to Big Sur, install Python 3 using the latest package installer provided by Python.

If you installed Python 3 from a different source, such as Homebrew, it is necessary to check whether Python 3 can properly open HTTPS connections. The following test prints 0 for success, or 1 for failure. Upon failure, you will need to ensure SSL certificates are installed and accessible to your Python 3 installation, or remove the installation and reinstall from the official package.

python3 -c 'from urllib.request import urlopen; test = lambda x=exec("def f():\n try:\n  urlopen(\"https://handbrake.fr\", timeout=10)\n  return 0\n except:  return 1"): f(); result = test(); exit(result)'; echo $?

Clone the HandBrake repository.

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

List available tags in the HandBrake 1.6.x release series, and check out the most recent.

git tag --list | grep ^1\.6\.
git checkout refs/tags/$(git tag -l | grep -E '^1\.6\.[0-9]+$' | tail -n 1)

Initialize and update all submodules.

git submodule update --init --recursive

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 PATH². 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.activecpu) --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