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.flac

Low risk

Free Lossless Audio Codec

Lossless audio compression that reduces CD-quality recordings to roughly half the size of WAV. The de-facto choice for music archival.

MIME types

  • audio/flac

Category

audio

What opens this file

  • VLC
  • foobar2000
  • Audacity
  • Music.app (macOS Big Sur+)
  • iTunes via plug-ins

How to open by OS

Windows

  • Groove on Windows 10+, VLC, foobar2000.

Mac

  • Music.app on Big Sur+ or VLC.

Linux

  • VLC, Rhythmbox, Audacious.

Ios

  • Music (iOS 11+) and VLC.

Android

  • Stock music apps and Poweramp.

Safety notes

  • Decoder CVEs are rare but have occurred. Still, lossless compression keeps the overall risk profile low.

Common mistakes

  • Sending FLAC over Bluetooth re-encodes via the codec on the link, defeating the lossless promise — value shows up on wired listening.
  • Tag handling (Vorbis comments) varies between apps. Standardise on one tagger to avoid metadata churn.

Related extensions

References