What is a .flac file? (FLAC)

FLAC compresses audio without losing a single bit, giving you CD-quality or better sound at roughly half the size of WAV. It is the favourite of audiophiles and music archives who want perfect copies that still save space.

What is a .flac file used for?

FLAC is lossless: decompress it and you get back exactly the original samples. That makes it ideal for archiving CDs and high-resolution audio.

Compared with WAV it saves around 40 to 60 percent of the space while staying bit-perfect, and it supports rich tags and cover art.

Support is now broad on desktops and Android, though Apple historically preferred its own ALAC. Converting to ALAC or MP3 covers those cases.

How to open a .flac file

The .flac format opens in the following apps, grouped by operating system. If one app does not work, try another from the same list. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see how to open a .flac file.

Windows

VLC
foobar2000
Media Player (Windows 10+)

macOS

VLC
Music (recent macOS)

Linux

VLC
Rhythmbox

Web

Most modern browsers

How to convert a .flac file

You can convert a .flac file to MP3, WAV, ALAC, AAC using a conversion tool or the export menu of an app that opens it.

.flac file signature (magic bytes)

Programs recognise a .flac file by the bytes at the start of the file, not by its name. These are the signatures for FLAC. For a full breakdown, see the FLAC file signature page.

Hex signature	Offset	Note
66 4C 61 43	0	'fLaC'

See the full magic-numbers reference for every format.

Frequently asked questions