HandBrake Documentation

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.

• Xcode 14.3.1 or later
  • free Apple Developer registration required, or install from the Mac App Store

Additional dependencies (may be built via included script):

• autoconf 2.71 or later
• automake 1.16.5 or later
• cmake 3.27.4 or later
• libtool 2.4.7 or later
• meson 1.2.1 or later
• nasm 2.15.05 or later
• ninja 1.11.1 or later
• pkg-config 0.29.2 or later

Optional dependencies (required by libdovi)

• Rust 1.64.0 or later
  • Cross-compiling requires adding an additional target:
    • rustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin for cross-compiling for Apple Silicon on an Intel Mac
    • rustup target add x86_64-apple-darwin for cross-compiling for Intel on an Apple Silicon Mac
• openssl
• cargo-c
  • Can be installed by running cargo install cargo-c

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

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