Tip #27: Import FLAC into iTunes (on Mac) and sync to your iPod

Using iTunes on Windows? Read this post instead.

If you own an iPod, and you are seriously hooked on lossless music formats like FLAC (like me), you are slightly out of luck: iPods don't support FLAC, but they do however support Apple's own lossless format called Apple Lossless. On Windows, iTunes doesn't even let you import FLAC files into your library. I have found a tutorial to import FLAC files into iTunes on Mac, play them, and convert them to Apple Lossless for syncing to an iPod. The video did help a great deal, you can watch it to see it in action step by step, but the author did miss out a critical step. Here are the complete steps to do it if you are using iTunes on a Mac.

Installing Fluke

1. Download this package called Fluke, which will add FLAC playback and support to iTunes. The page will ask you if you want to try version 0.2, just click on get it and download the zip file (version 0.2.5 as of writing).
2. Open the unzipped folder, and double click on the installer. Press Continue, Install, type your password, then Close.
3. Now you can either double click on your FLAC files, or drag and drop them into iTunes to import them. You can also do File > Add to Library in iTunes if you prefer. iTunes will then copy the FLAC files to your iTunes music folder.



Click Import Settings in iTunes' preferences.

4. This is the missing step from the video. In iTunes, click on iTunes > Preferences, then under General, click Import Settings... behind of "When you insert a CD". For "Import using", choose Apple Lossless Encoder.
5. Now, select the FLAC files in your library, right click and choose Create Apple Lossless Version. That's it! Now you just have to wait for iTunes to convert them.
6. Once converted, you can choose to keep or delete the FLAC files from your iTunes music folder. If you can't identify which ones are the FLACs and which ones are the Apple Lossless ones, right click on the column headers of the list of songs, then tick Kind. The Kind column will be shown. The ones with "QuickTime movie file" are the FLACs, and the ones with "Apple Lossless audio file" are, well you know already by now :)

And that's it - now that your FLACs are in Apple Lossless format, you can add album art to them and sync them to your iPod. If you're wondering why the FLACs had "QuickTime movie file" as their kind, this is because Fluke actually uses a clever way to trick iTunes into thinking that FLAC files are playable using QuickTime.

Just to remind you: in step 4 you changed the import settings which applies to importing CDs - if you don't want to import your audio CDs in Apple Lossless, then remember to change that setting back to, say AAC Encoder

I haven't found something similar to Fluke for Windows. If you want to enjoy lossless music on your iPod and you are using Windows, you will need to use a 3rd party software such as dBpoweramp Music Converter to convert the FLACs to Apple Lossless, then import them into iTunes.