BlackHole audio on a Mac: what it is and how to set it up

By Dan Murtagh, mix engineer and audio educator · Updated 4 October 2026

BlackHole is a free, open-source virtual audio driver for macOS, made by Existential Audio. It adds a pretend sound device to your Mac: audio sent out to BlackHole comes straight back in as an input that another app can record or use. It doesn’t record anything by itself, so you pair it with a recorder like QuickTime Player, Audacity or a DAW, usually through a Multi-Output Device so you can still hear.

BlackHole replaced Soundflower as the free way to record a Mac’s sound, and it’s still the best free way to send audio from one app into another. This guide covers the setup, the usual problems and how to remove it.

What is BlackHole?

BlackHole is a virtual audio loopback driver. Existential Audio describes it as letting applications “pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency”. Once it’s installed, BlackHole 2ch (or 16ch, or 64ch) appears as both an output and an input in Sound settings and in every audio app. Whatever plays into it can be picked up on the other side.

It isn’t an app, so nothing appears in your Applications folder. You’ll find it in Audio MIDI Setup, System Settings → Sound and your audio apps’ device menus. It passes audio at 32-bit float, lossless for anything up to 24-bit.

Is BlackHole safe?

Yes, when you get it from the source. BlackHole is made by Existential Audio Inc., its source code is public on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 licence, and it’s widely used: the project has close to 20,000 stars on GitHub. Existential Audio signs and notarises its installer with Apple, and the project publishes the script that does it.

It installs an audio plug-in at /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/, the standard place for virtual sound devices. It needs no kernel extension and no change to your Mac’s security settings. Download it only from existential.audio, its GitHub page or Homebrew; a copy from anywhere else could be anything.

Which version should you get?

All three run on Intel and Apple silicon Macs with macOS 10.10 or later. The current release is 0.7.1 (July 2026). Checked 4 October 2026.

If you’re unsure, get 2ch.

How to install BlackHole

1. Get the installer from existential.audio/blackhole. The site asks for a donation; if you can’t afford one, it points you to its Discord server or Homebrew instead.
2. Quit your audio apps, including Audio MIDI Setup and any DAW.
3. Open the .pkg and install it. If the installer fails, move the file from Downloads to the Desktop (or the other way round) and try again: a known macOS quirk.
4. Restart your Mac when asked.

With Homebrew, it’s one line in Terminal: brew install blackhole-2ch (or blackhole-16ch, blackhole-64ch).

How to record system audio with BlackHole

The trick is a Multi-Output Device: a combined output that sends sound to your speakers or headphones and to BlackHole at the same time. Without it, everything goes into BlackHole and you hear nothing.

1. Open Audio MIDI Setup (Applications → Utilities). Click + at the bottom left and choose Create Multi-Output Device.
2. Tick your speakers or headphones and BlackHole 2ch. Make your speakers or headphones the top device (the clock source). If BlackHole sits on top, untick and re-tick your speakers to change the order.
3. Turn on Drift Correction for BlackHole, and for every device except the clock source. Set the sample rate to match your session, usually 44.1 or 48 kHz.
4. Choose the Multi-Output Device as your Mac’s output: right-click it and choose Use This Device For Sound Output, or pick it in System Settings → Sound. Set the listening level first, because the volume keys don’t work while it’s selected.
5. Choose BlackHole 2ch as the input in your recorder. In QuickTime Player, choose File → New Audio Recording and pick BlackHole 2ch from the menu next to the record button. In Audacity, open Audio Setup → Audio Settings and set the recording device to BlackHole, 2 channels. In a DAW, set the input device to BlackHole and the track’s input to 1–2.
6. Press record, then play. It records in real time, so a four-minute song takes four minutes. Trim and name the file afterwards, and switch your output back to your speakers when you’re done.

Need your voice too? To record a microphone with the Mac’s sound, for a tutorial say, also build an Aggregate Device that combines your mic and BlackHole into one input. BlackHole’s wiki walks through it.

Send audio from one app into another

This is where BlackHole earns its place. Set the sending app’s output to BlackHole and the receiving app’s input to BlackHole: a DAW into a video call or a streaming app, or one DAW into another. To hear it too, use the sending app’s monitoring or a Multi-Output Device. Existential Audio’s support page has guides for sending a DAW into the common call apps.

Common problems and fixes

• The recording is silent. Check that the Mac’s output is the Multi-Output Device and the recorder’s input is BlackHole, not your speakers. The recorder also needs Microphone permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone, because macOS treats BlackHole like any other input.
• I can’t hear anything. Your speakers or headphones must be ticked in the Multi-Output Device as well as BlackHole, and listed first.
• The volume keys don’t work. macOS can’t change the volume of a Multi-Output Device. Set each device’s level in Audio MIDI Setup, or switch back to your speakers between recordings.
• Crackles, glitches or drift after a few minutes. Turn on Drift Correction for every device except the clock source, and set the devices to the same sample rate.
• AirPods don’t work in the device. Don’t make them the clock source; use your Mac’s speakers (muted if you like) or BlackHole 2ch instead.
• One app won’t play through it. A few apps, including Apple Podcasts and Messages, don’t work with Multi-Output Devices.

How to uninstall BlackHole

1. Switch your output back to your speakers or headphones in System Settings → Sound. In Audio MIDI Setup, select any Multi-Output or Aggregate Device you made and click − to remove it.
2. Run the official uninstaller for your version, linked from the BlackHole README and the support page. If you installed with Homebrew, use brew uninstall blackhole-2ch instead.
3. Or remove it by hand: quit your audio apps, then in Terminal run sudo rm -rf /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/BlackHole2ch.driver (16ch or 64ch if that’s yours) and then sudo killall -9 coreaudiod to restart the Mac’s audio. It’s the main /Library, not the one in your home folder.

Do you still need BlackHole?

For routing, yes: nothing free does it better. For recording, maybe not. Since macOS 14.4, apps can record other apps’ sound directly once you give them permission: no driver, no Multi-Output Device, no lost volume keys. PrintBus, Piezo and Audio Hijack all work this way. On macOS 27, the built-in screen recorder (Shift-Command-5) can also Include System Audio in a movie of the screen.

If you installed BlackHole only to keep songs, references or lessons as audio files, PrintBus is built for that: press record once and each track arrives as a named, trimmed WAV or AIFF file. It costs US$39 once, where BlackHole is free, and it doesn’t route audio between apps, so keep BlackHole for that. See Loopback vs BlackHole for routing, and how to record internal audio on a Mac for every recording option.