How to Install FFmpeg on macOS

To get started, all you need is your Mac and the Terminal app.

First, let's open Terminal by pressing Command + Space, typing Terminal, and hitting Enter. We will be using Homebrew to install FFmpeg. If you do not have Homebrew installed yet, paste this command into your terminal and press Enter:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

You may be prompted to enter your Mac password during setup. Don't worry if you do not see any characters appearing on screen as you type—that is just a standard security feature in Terminal.

Installing Homebrew might take a couple of minutes depending on your internet speed, so give it a moment to finish processing.

Once Homebrew is ready, type brew install ffmpeg and hit Enter to install FFmpeg.

This download will take a short moment to fetch all necessary components, so sit tight while it completes.

To confirm that everything installed properly, run ffmpeg -version. If you see version details printed in your terminal window, you are ready to go.

As a practical tip, whenever you want to update FFmpeg to the latest version down the road, simply run brew upgrade ffmpeg.

Thanks for watching, and happy coding!