5 Free Ways to Convert FLAC to ALAC on Windows or Mac

Previously, I have shown you how to download Tidal music or Deezer music to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). If you want to play your downloaded FLAC songs to your Music Library on your iOS device or iTunes, you can convert FLAC to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) on Windows or Mac.

In this article, I will show you 5 ways to convert FLAC tracks to Apple Lossless easily. Of course, you can also use these methods to convert FLAC to other formats like MP3, AAC, AIFF, OGG, etc.

But if you want lossless music quality, ALAC is recommended, which is a type of lossless audio codec created by Apple Inc. After converting to ALAC, you can transfer the music to iPhone, iPad, iTunes, and iPod Classic.

Method1: Convert FLAC to Apple Lossless with Foobar2000

Foobar2000 is a completely free program that can help you convert as many songs from FLAC to ALAC losslessly. I think it is better than most of the paid applications that can do the same thing because it has a concise interface and the converted music file also contains the cover art and other metadata.

Foobar2000 also allows you to import them to iTunes or iPhone Music Library after the conversion. It supports all mainstream audio formats including FLAC to ALAC, MP3, AAC, AIFF, Musepack, OGG, Opus, etc.

Foobar2000 is available in Windows, macOS, and Linux. But the encoder is only for Windows, so you can use this method to convert FLAC to ALAC in Windows.

Step 1. Free download and install Foobar2000 from its official website. Then install the free encoder pack.

Step 2. Click File to import all the FLAC files that you want to convert to ALAC to Foobar2000. You can also Add FLAC files that you want to convert to Foobar2000 by dragging and dropping.

Step 3. Press Ctrl+ A to select them all and right click. From the menu, select Convert > Quick Convert > Apple Lossless.

Step 4. Click Convert and then select a location to save to converted files.

It only takes a few seconds to convert a few tracks. When the conversion is complete, you will find the converted files are pretty much the same size as the original FLAC file and all the tags and cover photos remain, which is really cool.

Method 2: Convert FLAC to ALAC FFmpeg on Mac or Windows

If you have followed my guide about downloading a private Facebook video, you probably have installed the FFmpeg, and then you can use it to convert FLAC to ALAC from Powershell. Once you have downloaded and extracted FFmpeg file to your computer, you can follow the steps below to convert FLAC files.

Step 1. Navigate to the folder where you save all the FLAC files.

Step 2. In that folder, press Shift + right click and then select Open PowerShell window here.

Step 3. Run the following command. Be sure to change the location path of FFmpeg accordingly as the screenshot.

ls -recurse -include *.flac | %{C:\the location path of FFmpeg\ffmpeg.exe -i $_.FullName -c:v copy -acodec alac ($_.DirectoryName+"\\"+$_.BaseName+'.m4a')}

When it is done, you can go to the folder and find an M4A file along with each FLAC file. If you want to use FFmpeg on a Mac, you can refer to this post to install FFmpeg on Mac.

Once you have installed FFmpeg on Mac, right click on the folder where you save the FLAC files and select New Terminal at Folder. Within the Terminal tab, run the following command to convert all FLAC to ALAC on Mac.

for f in *.flac;do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v copy -c:a alac "${f%flac}.m4a";done

If you only want to convert a single FLAC file to ALAC with cover art, you can run the command below:

ffmpeg -i input.flac -c:v copy -c:a alac output.m4a

You can change the input name and out name accordingly. If you don’t want to always type the command, I have made a shortcut to automate this. You can get this shortcut Convert FLACs on your Mac. Once added, you can select FLAC file(s) or folder and right click to select Quick Action > Convert FLACs.

Method 3: Convert FLAC to Apple Lossless Online

If you just need to convert only one file or two, there is no need to download and install dedicated software because you can free convert FLAC to ALAC online.

Just go to this FLAC to ALAC converter web page and drag and drop the FLAC files to start the conversion. You can also configure the advanced options including audio bitrate, audio channel, reverse audio, etc.

Since it is an online tool, it takes much longer to convert a file than the other 2 methods because you need to upload and download the files. The output ALAC files do not contain metadata.

FLAC to ALAC on Mac with Shortcuts

As you may know, Alconvert is a terminal utility built into macOS for converting the sampling rate and format of audio files. To save you time in learning how to use the command, I have made a shortcut for Mac to convert FLAC to ALAC. It allows you to convert multiple files all at once.

The Shortcuts app is a system-based automation app for iPhone and Mac, so you don’t need to install third-party apps.

Step 1. Get the Convert FLAC to ALAC shortcut on your Mac. Open the link in Safari and click “Get Shortcut”.

Step 2. Select the FlAC files that you want to convert and right click. You can also select a folder to convert all FLAC files in that folder to ALAC.

Step 3. Select Quick Action and then FLAC to ALAC (afconvert).

That’s it. All select files will be converted to ALAC in the original folder. However, this shortcut will not reserve meta tags during conversion. If you have FFmpeg installed on your Mac, you can use the FFmpeg shortcut to include album cover and other metadata.

FLAC to ALAC Shortcut for iPhone or iPad

Sometimes, I download some FLAC music on my iPhone, so I created an iOS shortcut to convert FLAC to ALAC. To use this shortcut, you need to also install the A-Shell app from App Store. It is a terminal app that provides a Unix shell environment on iOS devices.

No matter where you save the FLAC files on your iPhone, you can run this shortcut from the share sheet to convert to ALAC. If you run it from the Shortcuts app, it will prompt you to select a FLAC file from the Files app. Almost instantly, the conversion is complete and you can specify a location to save the converted file.

Conclusion

You can use any of these 5 methods to convert FLAC to ALAC for free. If you haven’t got any FLAC music files, you can use Allavsoft to download free lossless music and convert it to ALAC in one go.

For me, I like to use Foobar2000 because it is fast. Foobar2000 is also a great music player for Windows and macOS. You can add some packs and customize them in many ways.

Now, it is your turn. Which method do you like the most? Let us know in the comments.