Building HandBrake for Mac

Building HandBrake for Mac requires an Apple computer with a 64-bit Intel processor running macOS 12.6.7 Monterey or later, and the following dependencies.

Additional dependencies (may be built via included script):

Optional dependencies (required by libdovi)

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

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 1.7.x release series, and check out the most recent.

git tag --list | grep ^1\.7\.
git checkout refs/tags/$(git tag -l | grep -E '^1\.7\.[0-9]+$' | 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.

sudo 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 PATH1. 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

  1. /usr/local/bin is included in the system’s PATH by default. It is not necessary to add it to your environment’s PATH when installing the additional dependencies to /usr/local.